La Isla Bonita
by phantomwriter05
Summary: Running from a recent tragedy, John and Cameron travel to a tropical Island to find prospective. But when a thwarted murder attempt draws them into a conspiracy, they must rely on one another to solve the mystery in the catacombs of Paradise. Jameron. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

A warm rush of air glided like a roll of silk across the dark waves of an inky black ocean slushing and sloshing in its wake. Besieged by the waves and currents of Neptune was the small landmass of a lazy island that stood sentry over the gulf for centuries, undisturbed, solid as a rock. For years it had seen the ravishing passion of Mother Nature's fury through her powerful hurricanes that battered her companion, biting and ripping at his clothing, tearing away buildings and towns; her punishment leaving him bare and scared. But, if her passion was her gale force temper, then the warm tropical breeze that gently floated through the night was like the soft caress of a lover's light kiss.

The salt of the ocean carried on the wind mixed with the tropical foliage of the island tailor making a strange spice in the air that slowly saturated through the small coastal town. The spicy mixture weaved its way through Spanish architecture of white stone and red tile roofs. The small, picturesque Mediterranean style town of white cobblestone streets and chalky stone steps shone like marble in the pale moonlight. The full orb waxed in the obscurity of a light screen of clouds, resembling a porcelain bride veiled on her wedding day.

The combination of the rustling palm trees embedded inside the white stone walkways, and the clacking of the cultural and religious wind chime carvings outside the windows of the denizens of this lazy community made an odd foreboding music that bothered the only man on the island that was still awake.

Ricardo Montez felt as if his life was finally starting to turn around. He had been stuck here as long as he could remember. He spent his childhood watching tourists walk through these tired old streets, taking pictures … gawking at the lives of the people who lived there. His family had all been carpenters, a respected position in such a Christian community … or in any community that needed to be repaired after a hurricane. He enjoyed the irony of all the people who came here from the hustle and bustle of their city lives across the sea, across the world, to enjoy this piece of god-fashioned paradise, when in reality he would trade all of his lazy days just for a taste of the world on their city streets. He just wanted to feel like he was a part of something more in this world than the same five thousand people that lived on the island.

But today, today was going to change his life, maybe a big step in the right direction. Of course, maybe not to his mother or his father, but to him it doesn't get bigger than this. Senor Rivera hired him for his security team tomorrow for the island festival. It was a yearly celebration, to mark the anniversary of the Spanish landing, or the death of some admired priest; he couldn't remember. But what was important was that Senor Rivera wasn't based in the island; he was from the mainland miles away and handled events like this. Landing this job was his opportunity to leave. If Senor Rivera liked the way he handled the crowds, how he kept vigilance over the activities, he said he might keep him on. That meant that he would be taking Jobs on the mainland, and going other places.

He had been so thorough and cautious with this opportunity just around the corner that he had kept his badge and security clearance with him at all times, afraid he'd lose it. But while cautious, the excitement at the prospect of leaving the island had promoted a one last walk about, to memorize the check points for tomorrow. But in reality it was really to say goodbye to this place he couldn't imagine getting away from fast enough.

He had been living in his own fantasy of going to see the Golden Gate Bridge in New York City … or was it St. Louis? He never really got to find out which one it was, because he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. The island's street lamps were not electric but candlelit. In the flickering dimness of the firelight he spotted a silhouette leaning against ancient lamp pole. The man was tall and lithe; he could make out a tall tophat, and long coat. In his hand he was twirling a long staff of some sort. There was a shot of anxiety that ran through Ricardo as noticed the strange figure watching him from afar. Worse yet, the stranger was standing in the way of where Ricardo needed to go.

Ricardo was torn between taking the long way around to avoid him. The crime rate on the island was virtually non-existent, with the exception of drunken brawls over soccer matches or just drunken brawls in general. Sure he knew all this, but there was something in the way he was being stared at that he didn't like. But after a moment of steeling himself it dawned upon him that if he wanted to walk the streets of the world's greatest cities, or more to the point fight off drunken lechers during the beauty pageant tomorrow, he would have to face these kinds of fears.

There hadn't been two steps taken before the man in the top hat and overcoat began to whistle. He suddenly felt scared; his anxiety growing tenfold and he didn't know why. Getting closer and closer he started to realize that his mystery observer was making a tune to the odd clacking and clinking of the religious carvings and the palm trees. Closer now, he couldn't help but stare dumbfounded as he finally reached him.

It could've been awkward with him staring at this stranger as he was, but all the top hatted man did was whistle and tilt his head. Ricardo couldn't say he got a better look at him, but the shadow was more defined. He saw that the man had no shirt underneath his coat. He had a skinny physique of stringy, wiry chest and stomach muscles underneath a tattooed and very tanned complexion. Underneath his large hat, decorated with unfamiliar herbs, branches, and a feather was a long shiny curtain of straight, black hair.

"A little early for the costume? The festival is tomorrow, no?" Ricardo's chuckle was a little too high pitched and long as his Spanish stumbled in phantom nerves.

The security guard flinched as his mystery acquaintance tilted his head and gave him a big smile. His perfectly straight teeth had a yellowish green neon glow that shown dimly in the light. While distracted, the man in the top hat leaned forward into the candle light with an open hand just under his mouth. Ricardo opened his mouth to gasp when he saw the somewhat handsomely narrow face was painted in a skull design, outlined in black. As if blowing a kiss, the skull faced man blew a finely ground powder like soft sand from the island's ivory beaches into the security guard's face and mouth. Having a large coughing fit, the young man gripped his throat and hacked loudly as he hunched over.

Leaving him to recover, the skull faced man in the top hat continuing his whistling. The Voodoo priest smiled with his neon teeth. Twirling his cane topped with an orb which glowed a deep misty blue he disappeared into the darkness.

**_Detective Stories: Case #0_**

**La Isla Bonita**

_The train was starting to tip at an angle. He was starting to get worried, because all he could do was think of that last look his mom gave him before she disappeared. That weird sense of … he couldn't even think about the word, suffice to say that it seemed like it was for the last time._

_The control room was right were John Connor thought it would be. Three men lay propped against a steel door, barred from the outside; a security measure John didn't understand when he saw it. Inside, through glass panes he saw his mother and uncle struggling to force the door open._

_"What happened?" John shouted._

_Derek pointed to his ear, nudging Sarah to get her attention. She looked up and found John's eyes, the look she had for him, made his insides drop and twist. It was a look of fear mixed with a strange acceptance of an inevitable John couldn't as the runaway train tilted farther._

_"Hey!" John tried to force the bars apart, but he would have better luck, pulling iron hinges off an old stove. Derek pointed to his ear again, this time John understood what he was saying._

_"What happened?" He said into the jacket sleeve._

_"__The minute Cameron let that piece of shit go, he hit a switch on a remote and shut us in here." __Derek grunted trying to pry open the door._

_"__We're sealed in, John!" __Sarah leaned into Derek talking into his ear._

_Quickly the teen turned to Cameron who was observing the barred control room, her eyes searching thoroughly._

_"Can you get them out?" John asked desperately, feeling the train begin to shake and scenery start to fade into black outside. Cameron said nothing. She just stared at him, and opened her mouth._

_"No!" John interrupted her. He looked around with panic at everything around the door. "There has to be a safe switch somewhere out here!" John began looking around._

_"It's a dead switch John … controlled from the outside." Cameron said, watching him, as the lights flickered, the tremors began becoming more violent. Inside Derek and Sarah both looked up and then back at John who began tearing at the walls, looking for electrical wires._

_"John, we have to go." Cameron said gently._

_The youth turned to her as if she had just stabbed him in the spleen. "Are you nuts? They're trapped in there!" He yelled. "We got to save them!" he shouted, turning back, pulling the wires out frantically._

_Cameron stepped forward. "The Train is falling off the track. It will crash very soon, We have to leave." Her voice was monotone; challenging John's panicked last-ditch efforts. John Connor ignored the cyborg, connecting wires together, but it didn't do anything but blow out light bulbs over head from power surges._

_"__John Connor!" _

_The voice snapped him to attention, through the glass he found Sarah staring at him, her face stern and strong, like all of his memories of her. She punched the glass hard. __"You get off this train, right now!" __She ordered._

_"No … not without you and Derek!" he shook his head, avoiding their gaze. "It's just the right wire combination, is all!" His voice was rushed, the copper electrical cracking and snapping as he conducted and sparked them together._

_"__John, you've got to go." __This time it was Derek, his voice was eerily calm and his gaze steady and piercing through the glass. Derek Reese was a soldier, he had fought and killed, and learned long ago how to die._

_Tears began to well in his eyes. "You don't understand …" John's voice was horse. "I've got to save you …!" He said pulling at the bars with all his strength. Derek got a rueful painfully Derek Reese smile. The same smile he had in the park when John saw his father for the first time, the same smile he had in the park as a twelve year old playing with his little brother._

_"__Don't worry about that, kid, you've done something better."_

_CRACK, CRACK, CRACK_

_Gunshots rang out, startling John. Cameron fired the last of her clip into the window, weakening the structure, before her fist burst through the rest. A deep cold rushed through the hallway, but John didn't seem to notice … he was numbed already._

_"Mom!" John wasn't sure if anyone could hear it. But Sarah put her hand on the glass, a tear ran down her cheek. But she didn't say anything, her eyes were on him, but her mind was somewhere else. With a boy who slept with his hand under her chin, who crawled into bed with her when he was lonely or scared, and a simple hug made it go away, chubby cheeks, pirate smile, and big loving green eyes._

_"__Go!" __She fought a sob off, he voice half stern, half pained._

_Before he could say anything more to fight them on their decision, he felt two wool lined heavy security coats folding over him and a slender arm wrap around his throat. It began pulling him away from the door._

_"No!" John screamed after the two people now visibly clutching the other's hand behind a frosting glass window. He felt petite hands grip him with the strength of a trash compactor claw and fling him out a dark hole. His vision was darkened to total black._

A young man shot up from a tangle of soft linen sheets. He was covered in a sheen of cold sweat that lingered on his muscular arms and bare chest. His sharp, emerald eyes were haunted and stricken as his vision swirled around the dim, shadowy bedroom. The light of the closing day was an amber backdrop of purple swirls that colored the room like a water painting. Below the queen sized bed was cold, orange tile, the walls were painted a thick white and the room was decorated with old wooden furniture. He could smell the salt in the wind that pushed in white sheer drapes past the open French doors leading to a balcony. Out the doors he could hear the calming noise of crashing waves.

Across from the bed was a female's vanity with a flawlessly polished mirror. All he could do was stare at the man staring back at him. He knew the man but he didn't recognize him, at least not when trapped in the past. The reflection was not the scrawny, petulantly grim teen with an emo attitude. What he saw was a growing young man with a developing barrel chest. His dark hair was soft and thick, grown out and parted stylishly. His sad, yet handsome face was covered with three days' worth of boyish facial hair. Sorrow and the hardness of reality had melted away his boyish features and made him ditch the teen's rebellious attire and attitude.

The self-reflection in front of him pushed away the dregs of the nightmare and its sounds of squealing train tracks like a banshee calling to the dead, and the pained screams of a teenager on his knees in the snowy wilderness. The traumatic memories were slowly supplanted by the gentle thunder of a peaceful ocean, and the scent of paradise calming his nerves.

He felt cold rubber in his hand. Glancing down he realized that he was holding a sleek .45 Colt. Its barrel leveled at the familiar stranger holding him at gunpoint as well- a Mexican standoff. The hand holding the weapon throbbed numbly, dark splotches of old frost bitten flesh in odd patterns streaked across his gun hand; two fingers, index and middle, were darkened against normal skin.

His grin over the strangely existential showdown was dark and grim. "Bang," he growled at his reflection, lowering the weapon he had kept under his pillow.

Tossing the sheet off of himself. He threw a pair of muscular and powerfully built legs covered by black sleeping pants over the edge of the bed. He leaned the now more linebacker-built body over, covering his eyes with his hand. When he closed them he could still see two faces- accepting, sorrowful, and afraid. He could see his lost loved ones- his parents.

The Colt .45 was cold when he pressed it to his temple, lightly tapping the barrel against his head. He was trying to empty the memories from his head as if forcing out the last of the jam trapped in a jar. He gave a deep and sorrowful sigh and straightened his posture. He had tried to forget the sadness, as evidence by the collection of glass bottles on the nightstand and several by the single bed in the room. The headache and the sensation of stepping in holes helped him realize how well that was going. He could recognize some of them: coconut rum, the half empty bottle of tequila was easy to label, and three milk bottles of something that was sweet and burned in your stomach, a local brew that had a name he didn't bother learning.

He tossed the Colt on the bed and scrubbed his face tiredly. The dreams of mortal emotional wounds made sleep almost unattainable, much less a peaceful affair. The feelings of that night were fresh and it was hard putting a cap on the never ending fallout, the happy times turning to ash in his heart … each memory making the longing that much harder to control. He was trying to remember the safety and warmth of his mother's love, but found only the cold remains, like visiting the ruins of a childhood home.

He found his feet and stood on the cool tile, feeling the slippery surface clash with the grainy cross section of the mortar lines in between. Lost in his head of aching darkness, he padded toward the open balcony. He picked up a white button down with a lip gloss mark on the collar sitting on a chair underneath a satin bikini top. The drapes whipped at him as he shrugged the shirt on for a more presentable look. His nostrils were assaulted by a sweet perfume of coconut, seawater, and cherry lingering on the soiled button down.

For six thousand and what seemed like his left nut, John Connor stole the cabana with the spectacular view from the clutches of some drunken reality show peddling heiress. The blood red sun was falling in the west, the injection of the bright colors on the bottom of a growing darkness was like a spilled paint set. The glinting of awakening stars reflecting in the crystal water being drained of all color was like two ships passing in the night. From far away the faint echoes of island guitar music and trumpets signified the awakening of the town with the night, the nocturnal life of those looking to make memories, not to run from them.

"The Festival is tonight." A voice said to him gently.

He leaned against the doorframe and watched a curtain of satiny dark curls belonging to the girl on the balcony flutter in the wind. The glint of the final strands of the day reflected off her smooth exposed skin. A pure white bed cover made of silk wrapped around her straight-as-a-board naked body like a Grecian goddess. It was as if all the light was drawn to Cameron as she stared out onto the horizon.

John stayed in the fringes of the darkness. "I don't know, Cameron …" He shook his head and retreated further into the black blanket.

A slender hand clasped at her silk sheet, turning to face him. Her eyes were soft, if not emotionless, but even if they look that way he knew there was something behind them. She took a step forward and reached out for him from the light. He didn't step away; he never could step away from her touch, not ever again. Her hand took his and pulled him into the light and out of the darkness, away from his dark cave of alcohol and nightmares. The warm tropical wind and atmosphere made him lightheaded

"You haven't eaten in two days …" She reached up and touched his stubbled cheek gently. He grabbed her wrist and pressed it against his cheek hard. Years ago he would've said that she was only doing this to scan him and that any affection was John seeing what he wanted to see. But he could never be drunk enough or lost in so much darkness that he would ever forget the magic in nothing more than Cameron's simple touch. The touch of her hands on his back when he was inside her, the spark in her eyes of a strange panic at the new physical sensations wedded with pure exhilaration of the buildup. She never failed to shed a single tear that fell after her gasp of surprise when the release finally came. A part of him felt ashamed that their first time was between their second and third milk bottle of dark tangy crap bought in an alley like a couple of stupid kids, and not to candlelight and a delicious five star dinner like the lovers he felt they were. But the other part of him felt like if he didn't have her, didn't take her that night, he would've lost his mind a long time ago. The smell of her after sex, the taste of the sweat on her belly, her hands through his hair as she lay on top of him … She was all that he lived for, being with this thing that shouldn't have a soul was all that kept him from falling and never wanting to get up.

"We can order room service … stay in." John offered. He illustrated with a tender kiss that she never rejected. It was as if it was all she ever wanted from him and him from her. A small form of affection that both needed when all they used to think was only that it was what they wanted.

She leaned his head against hers, as he closed his eyes. "John, we didn't come here to stay in." She shot with a hard tone. He looked into golden-flecked, caramel eyes and realized, as if by intuition, that he was making her feel like a failure. She had brought them here to get away, to find somewhere that he could heal. Maybe finding each other was conciliation, but his drunken nights and unconscious days were hardly what she was looking for in him.

He took a step away from her. "What do you want from me?" He asked with a brooding growl in his voice, hoarse and older than it should.

"To come back to life … to come back to society."

"What if I don't want to?"

"You have to." She protested.

"Why?" He snarled. "Because I'm John Connor, leader of the Human Resistance fighting artificial war machines called Terminators, controlled by a defense network computer named Skynet that blew up half the world?" He said it as clinically as possible, absent of emotion like a computer's automated response.

"Because I need you to."

John blinked in surprise and turned back to find Cameron watching him with stern eyes. "I love you, John … I don't know how I know, but I have no other word to quantify it." She explained. "And because I love you, I know that what you're doing is not going to help you recover. I don't know what it's like to lose people I love, I don't know what it must be like to go through what you are … but if we continue like this I will." She nodded.

John walked to the edge of the balcony and gripped a rose studded trellis, bowing his head. "Do you know what it's like to have your whole world … taken from you?" He spat at the situation, not Cameron. "To wake up one day and realize that without one person the one constant in your life … it's built on nothing?" he asked the cyborg.

"Your life is not nothing, John." She touched his arm. "You are everything to me." She finished, turning him to face her. She searched his eyes for a moment. "But, If you think your life is nothing, then build a new one with me." She cupped his stubble. "Please?" She asked.

There was something heartbreaking about the pure court like courtesy in her voice. It wasn't much; there was something off kilter in her voice, just a twinge of a tremble. Maybe that tremble was fear of being left alone, or the thought of a world without him. But if his life was handicapped before, then that little speech was all he needed to hear to know that someone still had a stake in his life. That in John's life there was still someone who saw him as more as just the key to the future, as the savior of humanity. For once it was someone who needed him because they loved him. It was all the strength he needed.

He pulled her into his arms as the bright red sun dipped into the sea and the bright fields of stars shown above them. When the warm tropical wind breathed life into the town …

They kissed.

* * *

There was electricity in the air that filled the crowded cobblestone streets outside the tall Mediterranean buildings that enclosed the festivities. Outside the glass entrances of usually quiet cafés groups of men in white shirts and black slacks played homemade instruments serenading anyone who would toss a few pieces of paper in the bowler hats at their feet. Kids with plastic skull masks rushed through gaps in the crowds armed with sparklers. All sorts of music lingered in the charged air, bring a mixed chorus of different sounds that all somehow fit the setting.

Navigating through impromptu dancing and mingling, Cameron strode through the white stone walkways with a look of wonder and confusion; like a child introduced to something that they weren't sure if they were scared of or enchanted by. Her white island dress fluttered around her knees, offset against the red rose in her hair. Cameron's new bronze tan made her exposed skin shimmer in the excitement of the night. Close behind her John's face held a loving smirk as he watched her, still his dimmed white button down shirt over a blue t-shirt, old jeans, and grim façade stood out amongst all the brightly dressed, happy carefree people around him. He kept a close watch on her, though he could list only a couple names on a few fingers that could actually harm her.

The cyborg turned back toward him as if expecting him to explain what everyone was doing, and where to start. He bumped her shoulder and took a look around at the dancing and the drifting of clothing from balconies where a gaggle of drunken college girls were stripping only to their bare essentials as to not get arrested.

"So what do you want to do?" He asked, while shaking his head at one of the girls motioning for him to come up to her.

Cameron was momentarily distracted, fixing a death glare at the blond in the shimmering bikini who could be seen looking away quickly from the deadly caramel eyes. "I don't know …" She replied innocently as if the incident never happened.

They were interrupted by a large fat man with thick black hair, ashy skin, and a goatee. His stumbling was what he was trying to pass off as dancing. Sarah would've said that he was dancing to the beat of his own head as his movements didn't seem to match any music in hearing. Laughing giddily at nothing in particular, he grabbed John by the shoulders and kissed him once on each cheek. Then he turned toward Cameron and wrapped large arms around her waist, poised to kiss her on the lips. John's large hand ripped him away from the confused girl. But just as John was about to strike him, the fat man looped several necklaces of multicolored beads around the raised fist and danced away from trouble.

"You alright?" The younger man asked his companion, glaring after the overly happy fat man with another shake of his head, removing the necklaces.

"Yes …" She seemed more interested in John present than the man who tried to kiss her.

"BEADS … HE'S GOT BEADS!"

She looked up at the college girls as they suddenly searched below for John, who turned red. He took ahold of Cameron's arm. "Let's go." He said and escorted her down the cobble stone street, away from eye sight of the balcony.

"Why do they want the beads?"

"The necklace?"

"Are they culturally significant?"

"Uh … not really."

"Then, why?"

John let go of her arm and began walking down an alley from one busy street to an even louder one. They stopped a moment when a couple making out passionately moved in their way, relocating from one side of a building to another without breaking the kiss. He smirked, leading her past the girl ripping at the man's shirt.

"They're party beads …"

"So?" She asked.

"You know … a girl flashes you and you give them the necklace." He chuckled at the novelty of it, something he never really got to enjoy, being raised by such a strong woman who would take pound of flesh if she ever heard he had partaken in such a demeaning ritual. John found her rules to be a bit of a double standard, coming from a woman who was a waitress at Hooters the summer after Cyberdyne.

Spinning the necklaces, John was reminiscing of the unfair repression of his male rites of passage when Cameron stepped in front of him. He opened his mouth to ask her what was the matter, when she suddenly slipped her white dress down to her waist, exposing a pair of perfectly sized and supple breasts, topped with thick, ample nipples. John made a strange noise that was between a gasp and a surprised snort.

"Cam …" He chastised in shock, turning to see that the woman eating off her lovers face seemed to catch the show. Turning quickly, the young man pulled the girl in his arms to cover her, lifting her momentarily in the air by her slim waist and carried her out of sight, between two tall stacks of crates.

He searched innocent eyes. "Wha … what are you doing?" He asked in confusion, helping her push up her dress, trying not to think how much he suddenly wanted to touch them. Cameron didn't respond, she just stared at him. "Cameron?" He asked with more conviction. She continued to say nothing, only tightening her cheek and fixing him with an expectant look. There was silence for a beat, before it finally hit him.

"Really?" He squinted at her with a sigh. She nodded, extending her hand out toward him. He sighed again and shook his head, handing her a necklace. She frowned and took the rest of them from him. He rolled his eyes, till she pulled him into a deep kiss. As his hands slipped around her waist he knew, in her own subtle way, this was her message that he didn't need to see anyone else, what she had was all he needed. With the kiss there was an overwhelming sense of completeness that overcame him, that made her sentiment the most accurate he ever felt in his life.

She broke the kiss and gave a ghost of a smile. "Oh Yee of little faith." John breathed heavily motioning to the collection of necklaces she slipped out of her hands. They're foreheads were touching again as he chuckled. His hands began reaching underneath her skirt, hooking his thumbs in the elastic bands of satin panties against her firm rear. He couldn't help himself with the now familiar ignition to heavier petting that always came from her showing him her bare breasts.

"What's that?" Cameron gaze was captured elsewhere and she slipped away from him, back to the middle of the alley.

To John the action was like slamming the breaks on a wet road … a very wet road. "What?" There was a sobbed snort of frustration. There was a knowing look in her stoic eyes that let him know she knew what she was doing. Motioning her head to the next street, Cameron began to wander away.

His response to shake the "Launch Sequence" off in his pants was a thump of his head against the stone. "If I wasn't sober a minute ago." He said to himself in a pained grunt. Rubbing his forehead, John peeled away to pursue the disappearing Cameron who was molding into a packed building across the street. "Cameron, wait!" He began to jog after the girl when he bumped into someone.

In the final cycle of puberty John had grown more than probably anyone could expect, so when he ran into the skinny boy about his age, he was surprised that the local flew back into a street palm tree. "Oh … sorry, man." He offered him a hand.

John recoiled a moment when he saw that the boy had swollen, encrusted, blood shot eyes, but rather than red, the visible spider web veins on the orbs were a dark blue. The boy was sweating profusely, soaking his dark cropped hair and white festival security shirt as if he had just showered with his clothing on.

"No … No!" He screamed at him stammering. Even against his wishes, John still helped, hauling him up to his feet. The man fought off John's grip and began to swat at his peer like a flustered chicken. He pursued John two steps despite being outweighed by fifty pounds of muscle, and was about a foot smaller. John even about seventy-five percent recovered from his hangover easily slipped out of range of the smacks.

But rather than press the assault any further, the island security guard began to sprint away from the larger youth. John flicked his eyes around in confusion and tried not to snort at the strange guy or his weird line of attack. When no one seemed to notice the altercation, he moved on.

The building that his cyborg companion had wandered into was an open café with no walls under the supports of a condominium. Behind the counter, instead of baristas serving hot cups of local flavors and old classics, there was a group of men and women playing instruments. There was an older woman with frizzy curls playing Spanish guitar, a young man with maracas shaking to a beat. A pretty young woman in an island dress playing on a keyboard, and a stand up base, played by a man in a straw fedora and sunglasses.

Groups of couples, some local, some tourists, or a mixture were dancing to the heavy Latin beat that was echoing through the café. The woman with the Spanish guitar was singing while shaking her hips and nodding to the beat. He pushed his way through the crowd of onlookers trying to find Cameron. When he found her, she was watching the movement, her eyes darting at each couple analytically. But just as she was in reaching distance, she suddenly spun gracefully onto the tile dance floor.

Her hands ran through her long mane of ringlets, as she began to shake her hips. Her stoic eyes scanned the crowed till they found him. She didn't smile, didn't show any ounce of emotion. Her movements were an amalgamation of everyone else around her, turning it into something completely original that drew all eyes to her. It was hypnotizing the way seemingly stiff mechanical limbs suddenly could find such enticing alternative movements that could capture everything inside him, bending him to her will. It was at times like these as she got closer to him, watching him like he was the only one in the room; he remembered voices tell him how she was just a machine and that she didn't have a soul … and now all he could think was how wrong they were.

Her slender arms tossed themselves around his neck as she moved to the beat, her eyes never leaving his. Under the stoic walls of nothing, he saw it. He may be the only one who ever would: evidence of something more behind them, something living, breathing, self-aware. Maybe John Connor was crazy, maybe he was seeing things, but at times like this, when Cameron looked like this, when she was holding him … maybe the world was better in the mind of the insane. He closed his eyes when he wrapped his arms around the dancing girl and pressed his nose into her silky curls a hint of the red rose in her hair mixed with sweet pea shampoo.

He opened his eyes, with the intention of telling her that he didn't actually dance, as she was trying to pull him onto the floor with the rest of the lovers. But something else snared his attention. Amongst the crowed on the other side of the café was the sweaty security guard from earlier. In his hand, oblivious to others, was a handgun. His crusty, blood shot eyes were focused on the couple in front of John and Cameron.

He felt a rush of anxiety that made it feel like millions of ants were suddenly scurrying through his veins. His eyes grew wide and every bone in his body told him to run. His companion stopped dancing abruptly; her skin to skin vital tracker must have alerted her like a siren. She leaned her head back to look at him in alarm.

"Behind us … one o'clock, a security guard has a gun and he's about to use it." He didn't have to be a detective to know that crazed disconnected look when someone crazy timer was about to ring. He also didn't have to raise his voice over the music … her sound isolating settings was something that came standard with all cybernetic girlfriends. Cameron craned back her head, still in John's arms and found him.

"Screen his vision, keep him moving till he has to reposition close to me, and then I'll take him out." He ordered. He didn't tear away his vision from the man who was crying now; his shaking was almost involuntary.

Cameron turned back to him. "This isn't our mission. We should leave." She contradicted.

He fixed her with a cold gaze; an unpleasant reminder of the last time she had told him that. He didn't have to say anything more. She craned back, and then returned to him. Even awakening a deep anger within him, she still planted a firm kiss against his lip, untangling herself from him. She returned to the dance floor with her sleek, perfectly smooth movements that garnered attention.

The security guard visibly snarled as Cameron moved between a beautiful Castilian blond with light skin and a well-tanned man with perfect dark hair. The Gunman's eyes flicked in panic as he moved through the crowd, John took an angle, ready to engage. Cameron's screen was subtle, seemingly random, as the crowd watched with awe and cheers. The closer John got the easier it was to see how beyond agitated the gunmen was getting with Cameron.

He had tried his best not to draw attention, but an old woman refusing to let John pass his detour snared the Security Guard's attention. They locked eyes and John hesitated when he saw that the man was crying tears of blood. Everything happened fast, though it seemed more like a blur. The man pivoted and began firing at the couple and Cameron. John reached under the button down and drew his Colt. When the security guard saw the weapon he dropped the gun and began to run. John would've dropped him, but the risk of hitting someone was too high.

He turned back to the dance floor and sprung toward Cameron who was lying lifelessly on the floor, her eyes blank, her hands splayed over two gunshot wounds in her belly. The crying blond beauty was kneeling over her, screaming through sobs, her boyfriend holding her. The sight of Cameron lifeless, covered in blood shook John to the core. It was like being trapped in a nightmare; it was a marriage of fear and anger.

He dropped to his knees, sliding to Cameron's side. "Get her out of here!" John pushed the sobbing blond and her boyfriend away from his fallen lover. The woman protested, but her boyfriend dragged her away into the mass of panicked people. John cradled Cameron in his arms and pressed his cheek against hers.

"John …" She said his name like she was asking him for his opinion. "I'm fine." She didn't miss a beat. In the imagery of her fallen form, he had forgotten what she was and what she was designed for. "John, I'm okay." She repeated opening her eyes and frowning in confusion at his tears.

"Just uh …" he gulped and wiped his eyes. "You know, playing a part." He sniffled. The loss of Sarah and Derek was too fresh to see Cameron go down, to see her blood all over her beautiful dress. He never wanted to be holding her like this ever again.

"Oh … Okay." She said easily.

He cleared his throat and in his heart the sudden sorrow and fear began to turn into something else, something black and angry. His adrenaline rose and his breath began to become ragged. He bit his lip, turning gaze to where the shooter had disappeared.

"John?"

"Stay here till the room clears, then get back to the cabana." He laid her back down.

She may have called his name, but he wasn't sure with the blood roaring through his ears. His legs were on fire and the well-lit world of the café gave way to the dark blurs of the panicked street. His emerald eyes were like scanners, searching thoroughly for the white shirt. When he whirled around he saw the gunmen hiding in an alley. When he realized that John had spotted him, he began to run.

Dust and beach sand clouded underfoot, as John's boots pounded over the cobble stone in pursuit. When he turned into the alley, he saw that the Security guard had an extensive lead on him. Without breaking stride, John decided to change up the rules. He leapt full speed onto a crate and began to climb the large stacks, keeping pace with his mark. At the highest point, he leapt onto a balcony overlooking the alley. Climbing on the rail guard, he pulled himself on top of the roof. He lost time when he slipped on the smooth orange roof tile. Finding the right footing he ran on the arch of the roof, stalking his mark.

He leapt from roof to roof, over retaining walls and hacienda tile. He found it odd that most would be fleeing away from town, but the security guard was actually moving closer toward the center, specifically toward the historical district.

The man disappeared between two iconic buildings. One was a large gothic cathedral, with large spired towers guarded by fierce looking gargoyles. The midsection was decorated with a round stained glass window in the shape of a clock with each one of the apostles replacing a number, with Jesus in the center. The second was a smaller building with a cross inside a halo circle of stone at the apex of the mission building.

John grunted when he landed from the second story. He had bent his knees and relaxed his body, rolling into the landing. Once on his feet in front of the mission he ran toward the sound of squealing metal. There was a substantial incline in the narrow alleyway between the mission and the cathedral. The old pathway led to a barred door that hung open haphazardly. The stone underfoot was stained with several hundred years of grime and the odor of stale rainwater.

There was a feeling in John's gut that told him that it was stupid to follow the shooter into the underground tunnels. But that was going against the knowledge that the man was unarmed and that he shot Cameron. He remembered thinking sometimes when her partnership with Sarah and him began that it shouldn't bother him when Cameron took a bullet. But it always did not matter what his brain told him. But now that she was all he had left, whether it hurt her or not … no one was going to get away with even attempting to harm her. That conviction of anger boiled his blood, sending it through his body till he threw caution to the wind.

The tunnels were dark and narrow, blanketed in dim shadow, with a hue of mist at his feet. It wasn't as much of a sewer system as he thought originally when he studied the area around him. Looking through the old eroded stone of the dank passage, he saw long rectangular slots embedded in the walls. He recoiled at the sight of skeleton bodies, in ragged old clothing lying inside. It dawned upon him that he had followed the gunman into the town's catacombs.

Trying hard not to focus on the rows of dead bodies lining the walls on each side of him, he moved through the shadows, straining his ears to hear anything he could: a foot scrape, a step in a puddle. Suddenly he wished he hadn't strained too hard.

"AHHHHHH!"

A blood curling scream filled the tunnel with heavy acoustics that made John jump in surprise. Redrawing his pistol, the youth charged ahead through the tunnel's dark passage weapon at the ready.

He found the man he was looking for several feet from a dark abyss were the catacombs seemingly ended. He was slumped against one of the ground floor slots, motionless. The trained youth approached cautiously, it was never beyond anyone to play possum, especially unarmed. But even in the dark, the smell of emptying bowels was more than an unpleasant give away that the security guard had met his end. He lowered his weapon and squatted next to the lifeless body. His dark eyes were empty, marred by bloodshot veins the color of enriched blood. Trails of blood from his tear ducts and nose streaked across the man's sweat dampened face onto his white security shirt where it stained along with body salt and sediment from the tunnel. John frowned in confusion turning the dead man's head to get a better look at his eyes, and the odd color of blood coming out of his nose.

From behind him a trousered leg silently slipped out from one of the slots of the catacombs, followed by the body of a lithe man in a tailed suit coat. Quietly, he pushed himself out like he was arising in the morning to start his day. The shadow tilted his head in fascination, before digging his top hat out and placing it on his head. It was the rattle of his staff against stone that alerted John to another's presence. He whirled quickly, gun in hand, but the figure swung his rod knocking the gun out of John's hand. He heard it skitter into the dark. John was moving into a defensive position when the priest opened his palm and blew something at John.

It felt like he had inhaled in the middle of a sandstorm; John's airways clogged with grained powder. He coughed violently, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. Despite the cheap trick, his vision wasn't so impaired that he didn't see the shadow raising his cane to hit John over the head. Fighting the suffocating sensation of vital airways being saturated by sand, he put all his effort into a haymaker that made contact with his opponent's face. The blow from the large fist turned the new foe's head to the right and sent him stumbling. John persuade with another from the other fist, the slim man wobbled even further backwards. Finishing the combination, John hit his enemy with a heel kick to the diaphragm. The strike sent the top hatted man shoulder first into the corridor wall, before landing on the floor with a splat.

It was all he could muster, before John surrendered into another coughing fit. Unable to control himself, his first and most basic instinct was to run. Using the walls as support, he moved the opposite way from his fallen adversary. When the wall ended, John let out a startled grunt as he lost his level footing. At the edge of the catacombs corridor was a stone ramp that John couldn't see. Losing his balance, he tripped in the air and rolled down the hard stone incline. He landed with a clap of his palm against a flat floor, as he slid into the middle of a large, dark room. In his eyesight he saw the dim light of candles and a table in front of him.

The table was decorated with a crimson tablecloth of velvet, and strange wicker idols. On golden plates were the entrails of animals, and chicken's feet, all of which were sacrifices to a human skull painted with animal blood on the sculpted body of a scorpion. Still wheezing, John found his feet slowly, rubbing his shoulder and began to look around.

The large room was a lobby made of old gray stone, the floor was a platform surrounded by a moat of drainage water, bridged by four ramps leading to tunnels in each direction. He went into combat mindset when he saw the shadows of movement in each tunnel. The dark figures slowly crawled out from slots in the wall and stiffly moved toward the ramps; the youth found himself surrounded.

Then from the tunnel he came from he saw the neon glow of a blue orb. Like a switch there was a loud mechanical moaning sound like an ignition to a large machine. Suddenly a blue light flowed through see through cables that traced the outline of the room, stapled into the corners between the walls and ceiling. Like flowing water through pipes, the light ran through the cable, illuminating the scene.

There was suddenly a throbbing pain in John's head like someone was beating on the walls of his mind with a hammer, shaking loose things on shelves, mixing them up in his head. He squinted his eyes shut and tried to fight through the onslaught of pain. But the harder he fought, the more a sudden anxiety of fear rolled through his mind. Then all the things he ever wanted to forget, steamed through him like a freight train, until he couldn't think of anything else.

When he opened his eyes, he tried to escape the flood of nightmares and repressed memories. He could feel the loss of his mother and Derek on the runaway train that cold December night. He saw the merciless cold eyes of a killer in the girl he loved so much it hurt, as he ran from her on his birthday. He saw a crying, helpless cheerleader jumping off the school gym. The man with a chainsaw and leather mask at the haunted house he went to with his mom when he was seven. He saw the lumpy mismatched hulking body of the Golem of Prague with a face of the horrible things his small mind could conjure. He couldn't stop them, couldn't control them. The big jumble of sad and horrifying memories clogged his brain. The flashes molding into a loud, white noise in his head that would not let him think of anything else.

His vision began to shimmer and shake, quaking in his mind. Suddenly the shadows that surrounded him were not shadows at all. To the left, was a chubby woman with puffy, red hair. She wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves cut off, a white tank top and tight jeans. Her plain, freckled face was pale and her chubby gut was sliced completely open, yards of intestines hanging limply at her knees. To the right was a pupil-less, balding man, thin as rail. His mouth hung open to show case a large, bladed stab wound that you could see through. He wore a baseball jersey tucked into tight jeans. John was suddenly flanked by Todd and Janelle. In front of him Jordan Cowan stalked toward him, her face smashed in, her cheerleading uniform covered in her blood. But behind him was someone that John could never face, not in a million years. His camouflage fatigue pants and fur lined leather bomber jacket were covered in ice. His skin was milk white and frozen, his hands where black. But above everything else it was the sheet of ice that froze Derek Reese's hazel eyes making them almost glow.

Suddenly John Connor was surrounded by the dead of his past …

And they had come to collect.

_TO BE CONTINUED!_

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_**This story is half of me going back to what made writing for TSCC fun. The other part is finding myself as a writer again and troubleshooting some of the problems I have encountered while writing some of my longer serial stories. (Word Count, repetitive words … word counts.) **_

_**The inspiration is me reading and collecting one of my favorite writers of all time, Paul Dini's run on "Detective Comics" in which he told great one to two issue mystery stories. So I thought I'd try my hand at several short four to five chapter Pulp style Detective Stories staring an AU John and Cameron. **_

_**I also just wanted to prove to myself that I could still write a story with Cannon leads and Cannon leads only. **_

_**If you want to know what happened to Sarah and Derek read the prologue to "Because the Night: Volume II" if you don't want too then all you need to know is what is told in this chapter.**_

_** But know that there might be recurring characters from "Because the Night" these small stories are not connected to it at all. **_


	2. Case Note 1

They were all there, all of them. When it was quiet or when John was tired, when there was a lull in the day, he thought of them. He thought of all the people that died for John Connor, one way or the other. "We all die for you." That's what Derek said once. Someone might become numb to it as they got older, used to death around them. But John never forgot a face. Had he told them that, would they understand? Would they be at rest with the knowledge they weren't cogs in destiny's machine to him?

Somehow John doubted it.

Like a pack of wolves they circled him. They were the faces of the past, the people that guilt kept alive in his subconscious. Todd, Janelle, Jordon, and … Derek, they all haunted him in the still of a quiet night. All the while his head was rushing with the adrenaline. He couldn't keep a thought in place. His mind and thoughts felt like they were swept into a twister, spinning and turning. Transporting all of what made him John Connor to an OZ of terror and fear that numbed his body and slowed his movements.

"_**Kill him!" **_

The first to lunge was Janelle, blood dripping from her hanging intestines. Her fist connected with John's jaw, sending him reeling. He didn't get a chance to recover, when a heel jammed him in the small of the back. John had been sent backward by Janelle only to be struck by her husband like an ultra-violent volleyball serve. The youth had tried to put up some sort of threadbare defense in an overly anxious mind. But as he was ready to deflect Janelle's next strike, Derek's black, frost bitten fist hardened by ice struck John on the side of the face. His nephew grunted in pain, distracted enough for Janelle to land the blow that John had been anticipating. Todd moved out of the way as John lost his footing and fell to the stone floor. He turned on his side to protect himself, but was kicked with a white shoe laced with school spirit ribbons in the gut. Jordon Cowen had her usual miss bitch face that he always seen the cheerleader with.

He realized more than anything that he had to get his head right. There had to be something he could do to get control of what was going on in his mind. He took stock of the fact that other than the rushing images of everything he ever feared, pain was the only thing that was more powerful than the anxiety.

So he began using the pain to distract himself from the images in his mind. The stinging of his sore face, the burning in his gut was like hitting the breaks on a speeding automobile just before hitting reverse. John got enough control of his body to jam one of his feet under the knee of Jordon's raised leg ready to stomp him and used his other to sweep her planted one. He could feel the hard thump of the cheerleader when she hit the ground.

When the rest of the ghosts of his past saw that he fought back, they backed off. It was enough for John to find his feet, crouching in the imperfect perimeter they had him in. But the victory was small as he felt his mind slowly begin to speed up again, feeling the hesitation of fear when he looked into his uncle's frozen eyes. The pain was fading and he needed something to spark a new emotion.

If fear led to anger in the emotional wheel, then he needed something to spark the flame inside of him. He looked from face to face, and all he had felt was guilt, till something miniscule flashed in his mind when he saw Todd. It had been a conversation that he was never supposed to hear.

"_Damn it Janelle, why do you always bring home these damn kids, They're not goddamn strays you know." _

"_Shut up, Todd … John's a good kid, he's just a little confused." _

"_What, was he raised by wolves?" _

"_No, by a crazy woman." _

"_Like those people in Waco?" _

"_I guess …" _

"_Wow Mama … is that her?"_

"_That's his mother, when she was a girl." _

"_Lucky kid."_

"_Todd, we have no idea what she put him through!"_

"_So a beautiful woman got naked and diddled him or whatever … worst things have happened." _

"_You're an Asshole!" _

"_Shut up …"_

"_Put that back! It's John's!" _

"_What … you're the one saying that she did something bad to the kid. Plus if you're not putting out, why not keep it around so at least I can imagine someone naked and bent over the bed ..."_

THUNK!

John pushed off like a spring from his crouched position and landed a vicious upper cut that snapped Todd's head up. John's inside was on fire, more of a fire than he was expecting as the pain and the anger was like a spark in a gas warehouse. Todd was being back down as John pushed him out of the perimeter, landing heavy angry punches to the thin man's face each step he took. When John laid off the man fell to the floor and didn't get up again.

The anger in John's heart could be contained, adrenaline rushed through his body at dangerous levels of a wild animal with the scent of blood. He rushed forward and slammed a cement fist right into his uncle's face, ever hearing him second guess everything John ever did. Watching Derek go down, he felt someone jump on his back, a strong forearm around his neck. His former foster mother's attempts to stop John were in vein as he sent a strong upper kick straight into a charging Jordan's chin, knocking her out for the count.

From the corner of his eye he saw his uncle recovering. He gave a tight spin, using Janelle's untethered legs to whip Derek across the face. Within the whirl he got ahold of Janelle and used his momentum to Judo throw her. She landed with a splintering crash into the Voodoo alter. He took a moment to observe the four unmoving bodies around him and took a deep ragged breath.

Suddenly there was a sharp pain in his head that nearly brought him to his knees. It would seem the surge of anger wasn't intended from whatever it was that was working through his system. Now the two emotions were fighting total war through his body, like two tectonic plates gridding against one another savagely. His vision blurred and shimmered, the ground became uneven.

CLANK!

Something metal and hard hit him across the face sending him back. But with the uneven ground and blurring sight he fell to the floor, bracing against his hands. The shadow from before loomed, armed with the same cane in hand. The metal staff had a glowing orb of dark blue mist inside, the longer John looked into it, the more violent the mental earthquake was in his mind.

"_**You weren't supposed to do that." **_

The voice was so familiar that it caused the hair on the back of John's neck to stand up. A deep sinking sorrow filled him. It felt like there was a heavy weight on his heart that was dragging it into the depths of his torso. Yet a part of him still burned with the taste of battle, feeling unresolved like a nagging through the pain in his head.

John balled his shaking hand into a fist and brought it down hard on the stone floor. He felt something crack in his hand and the explosion of pain shock everything into silence. The rush of excruciation gave him a window of clarity to find his feet and charged forward to strike.

But heels grinded to a halt in an impromptu brake when he came eye to eye with the one face that hurt him more than anything that could touch him. Her little satin party dress was tattered, exposing matching underwear. The sight of his opponent's flawless porcelain skin, which was always as tough as iron, was now pale and lifeless. Her body had an icy blue tint and little veins of icy blue liquid running into her terrifying and yet sorrowfully beautiful face. Her unblinking dead eyes were drawn on him, hard and ashamed, encased in sheet of ice. Icicles clung to a long mane of her raven curls that spilled out of a top hat.

"Mom …" John breathed in fear.

Sarah Connor lifted her cane, and shoved in her son's face. The feeling of the orb right in front of him was like his head being on the other end of attached jumper cables. He growled in pain and folded like a lawn chair. He fought to keep pride and not crawl into a fettle position.

"Mom!" He begged like a small child as her rod followed him to the floor. He held his head feeling like it was on fire. Yet Sarah only stared, her stoic face turning into a grin of yellow neon in the dark. She lifted her cane overhead and began to beat her child with it.

Forehand, Backhand, Forehand, and backhand. She hit him over and over again a pronounced anger in each swing. She only stopped when John was bleeding from his mouth and ear. Breathing heavily she took a big step forward and delivered a kick to John's torso sending him rolling across the platform. He stopped just at the edge, an arm dangling. His frost bit hand dipped in the running stream of cool water of the Catacombs.

When John turned his head and saw how angry Sarah was, he coughed. "I'm sorry." He said so minimally that she probably couldn't hear him. "I tried too … I really tried to save you." His eyes filled with tears. "Please, let me save you … please, mom, give me another chance." He pleaded sadly.

CRACK!

There was a loud gunshot that echoed through the hallow cavern that knocked off Sarah's top hat. Turning she saw a stiff statuesque shadow standing at an entrance of a Catacomb. There was a second shot of a familiar .45 that whizzed over her shoulder and prompting her to run.

"No!" John muttered seeing the satin skirt twirl away from him. "Mom, come back!" He didn't have the strength for his feet though he tried. Sarah only turned once to his voice, when her eyes found him her lips formed the cruelest of smug grins, before she disappeared into the dark, a bullet ricocheting off a skull embedded in the wall next to her.

He pushed himself across the floor in pursuit of her. "I'll try harder … I promise!" He sobbed as gentle arms wrapped around him, turning him over to cradle. The soft smell of roses and sweet pea filled his nostrils as a single bloody tear fell.

"I promise."

* * *

The moonlight gleamed with a milky pale hue as the darkness resided into the corners of ramshackle buildings and scorched stone of a once easy going community. A city as old as it was mysterious, the center of a cultural fascination, a town as loud and attention getting as the entertainment it provided both on stages and theaters as in headlines.

Like a mistress's caress, the snow fell gentle and unfamiliarly on the dark streets of Los Angeles. The ruins of its glint and glamour of a long lost civilization jutting out in the background, a mocking memory of what this part of town used to be, before the bombs fell, before the Pescadero breakout, before the madness had been unleashed on the City. The blood used to be well covered by the glimmer of movie stars and celebrity, now flowed up from the gutters and into the vision of god's eyes. The area that was as familiar to tourists as to locals was now housing to the dregs of a once great society, the psychopaths and killers.

As soft as a shadow, combat boots raced over scorched and broken pavement down a secluded street. A hooded young man armed with his mother's tactical shotgun ducked behind a cut down palm tree. In front of him he had no clue that a long forgotten club abandoned and in ruins long before it ingested a grenade, held the keys to his origin. Emerald eyes scanned the area, the flecks of frozen precipitation clung to his vintage leather coat and resistance fatigues pants as a dementia patient held on to their wedding day, tight, but dissolving quickly.

Everything was still, quiet … he looked to the Tech Noir sign, but it didn't respond to his silent query. Where was his enemy, are they watching me? It was on his brain, in his senses, dulled by the cold, and yet enhanced by the need to find the girl his faceless challenger had captive. For a moment, unknown why to the young hero, but he felt a kinship to a ghost of the past, walking into the ruins of a nightclub. Armed with a shotgun, there to rescue someone, someone important … someone he loved.

He gritted his teeth with a long breath and kicked the double doors. They flew open with a crash, one falling off to the floor, the other warping and slumping in restraint like a hang nail. The Club, it smelled of stale alcohol and neglect. The tables were empty, dusty, overturned from an explosion, or a firefight that happened long ago. A rusting chain linked fence stood guard. It funneled new costumers down a narrow path between fence and wall, leading out to a booth riddled with nine millimeter bullet holes from a submachine gun.

Boots crackled against unrefurbished black and white checkered tile. The teen held his gun in a ready position, sweeping the area. He stopped at the silhouette entering his sightline. A slender female shadow lay splayed on a table of great significance, that he had no idea related to him.

Closer and closer he got to her, slowly lowering his guard till his person of interest was illuminated by a sliver of moonlight that found its way through a scorched sun roof. It was pierced by the ricochet of a missed shotgun blast, from a soldier pinned behind the bar during a duel with unstoppable killing machine.

She was the most horrific thing he ever saw and yet her beauty was angelic. A face of half metal, half flesh, one eye a haunting Carmel, the other a camera lens of blue. Her hair in perfect ringlets, but on the other side was shined chrome. She wore a silk sundress he had given her, it was perfect fit to her dancers body and yet a strange mockery of this creation of death.

"Which side?" her voice was strangely innocent as she lay flat on the table in a funeral pose, hands clasped on her stomach.

What …?" The boy asked.

"Which side do you embrace?" She asked again, her mouth unmoving.

He drew down his hood out of some strange respect as he approached her, his features just out of the light. "I don't know …" He responded. "Is there a right answer?" he replied with his own question.

"Is there?"

"You're neither …" He protested, finding himself suddenly angry that he came all this way, and she was now forcing him to face the questions he had been avoiding. Was she a girl or a machine … was what he felt real or was it fake?

"It doesn't matter …"

"It does."

"No … it doesn't."

He took a step toward her, aggressively, passionately. "It does … you matter to me." He protested. "I … I don't know what it is, but I … I can't let you go." He responded.

"You're going to have to learn too." She whispered.

"Why?"

The girl wordlessly turned her head, her face visible, along with the hole in her head, where her chip used to be. "Because I'm dead." Her voice sounded strangely melancholy, not for herself, but for him.

His weapon clanked when he dropped it. His heart sank, he felt numb, he couldn't move, couldn't think. Someone grabbed his shoulders and he threw them off. "No … NO!" He fell to his knees. A tear fell from his eye. "That's impossible … I …I" He couldn't find words, kneeling as if by an alter that her body was displayed on.

"It'll happen … sooner than later." She confirmed.

He couldn't move, he shook, what was he going to do without her. He couldn't imagine life, what was he going to do without seeing her each morning, each afternoon, each night in her room dancing to Rachmaninoff.

"No …" he mustered. "I won't let it happen." He felt someone starting to shake him, he reached back and swiped them away, with a strong blow, driven by irrational emotions tearing him apart.

"How … you're just a man." She asked.

"I'll be more than just a man!" He promised.

"You'll always be more than just a man." She nodded in agreement. "But it didn't save them." She replied.

He took a step back. "Who?" He asked.

_A heavy mist swirled around his feet and though the Skelton of the night club. The checkered tile was no longer tile, it was overgrown grass intertwined with weeds, damp and cold. Around them on the walls, tombs with faded golden plates surrounded them. _

"_What's this …?" He backed away from the crypt the girl was suddenly laying on, replacing the table. _

"_Your future." _

_An unbreakable chain of sorrow crippled him, as a slow loneliness hollowed the feeling out of him, like a carving knife to a jack-o-lantern. Despair and fear grew inside him, made him freeze in an anxiety ridden mind. His head was a container filled to volume, ready to explode. Something brushed the back of his leg. He jumped back, whirling to confront it, oversensitive in his rush of emotions. _

_It was a tombstone. _

**Sarah Jennette Connor **

**And **

**Derek Thomas Reese **

**October 1968**

_There were explosions of dirt and two hands shot out from the weed infested ground. One belonged to a female. Her fingers were slender, cold and pale. The other was male, black from frost bite and hard as solid ice. They both grabbed John's legs and began pulling him under. _

_He thrashed about fighting his mother and uncles grip. He could feel the pressure of someone holding him down. He struggled against their grip, making a strangled noise of fear. He felt a slender hand touch his cheek and the tin echo of a voice calling out his name. The last imagines of his mother and Derek's hands pulling him down with them into their icy graves resonated strongly in the darkness of his sightless vision. _

"John, listen to me … John."

The tin voice was starting to gain a familiarity as his hearing came more pronounced. He felt a half-naked body of a slim female lay on top of him, effortlessly hold him down. Her voice was unwavering and unafraid, solid and entrenched in deadpan. It was actually quite comforting.

"Cameron … help me!"

"It's fine, John.."

"They've got me."

"I have you."

Eventually he stopped fighting and started to focus. What he had assumed was the slender half naked body of Sarah trying to drag him with her into the clutches of death, was in fact the comforting warmth of Cameron. The Soil that his mother had trapped them in was in fact bed sheets. Yet his heart still raced and he felt anxiety rush through him all in darkness. He flinched at a gentle touch, the tickle of the tropical breeze.

"You're okay, John …" The cyborg's gentle voice of innocence was like heavy rain clouds in the barren desert. She pressed a hand against his bare chest that heaved. It was like losing the breaks to a car on a hilly road. "John, Please." Cameron requested, but he couldn't stop panicking. He felt her push off the bed and leave him.

"No …" He gasped in hyperventilation. "Don't" He reached into the dark, his eyes unable to open. "Don't … leave … me!" he called out to her. Soft hair tickled his face and lips pressed a firm reassuring kiss to his sweat soaked forehead, not a word was said from her when she was gone again.

His brow furrowed and he tried to overcome the panic that was tearing through his body. He began to grit through a mantra of the lack of realism to the flashes in his mind. He bit his lip till it was bloody, trying to use the pain to shock the system into stabilization. He wanted to cry when the bed dipped again and the slender hand of pure magic rested over his heart.

He jumped to Cameron's silent protests when the painful discomfort of a needle sank into his arm. He began to shake and gasp when she removed the needle. The smell of musty paper filled his nostrils as the opening of a bag was fit over his mouth.

"Breath." Cameron instructed with a whisper in his ear. He complied, being rewarded with a gentle kiss. "Breath." She repeated the order, once again kissing his ear when he obeyed. The pattern of gentle commands and kisses began to steady him as the panic and fear slowly slipped away. When she finally removed the paper bag, his companion planted soft moist lips against his. Though his were cracked and dried like parchment paper. He lifted a shaky hand and pressed it to the back of her head. His hand found relief in her silky curls.

"Not too fast." Cameron broke the kiss. "You need to keep your heart rate down." She said with conviction.

"Then you're the wrong nurse for the job." Even in the grips of his current condition there was still a part of him that couldn't help but joke when it came to her.

"…"

He couldn't see, but he knew that Cameron was just staring at him blankly. He should've known better than to make jokes around her. He changed the subject. "Never mind … How much have you been giving me?" He didn't need to see the syringe to feel the sedative running through his veins slowing his mind.

"A full dose, for two days … and lowering it slowly since." She supplied matter-of-factly.

"I can't see …" John lifted his hands to his closed eyes and felt a mixture of sticky muck half hardened. He groaned in disgust, rubbing out the viscose material between thumb and forefinger. John was sure that had anyone else been here, Riley, Sherri … they wouldn't have touched him with a ten foot pole much less kiss him full on the mouth. But then Cameron was not one to ever care about things like physical appearance.

Almost to confirm his point, he felt slim fingers lightly pick at the slimy coding that had glued his eyelids shut. "The toxin that was introduced through to your blood caused the irritation of your eyes, resulting in a mass production of mucus that seeped out of your tear ducts." Her voice was steady and clinical. She reached out again peeling away more crust.

"Cam …" he caught her hand. "Don't …" He pushed it away.

"It's not contagious, John, and even if it was …"

"It's not about catching it."

Cameron paused a moment. "I don't care, John." She stated easily. He opened his mouth to protest the point. "What you look like, what physical changes someone makes to you." She touched his cheek. "You're still you …" His frown fell and he smiled sadly, reaching out and rubbing her bare torso lovingly.

Suddenly he felt her dip down and pull him into a sitting position, the satin of her bra rubbing against his bare shoulder sent a shiver down his back at the over stimulation of his senses. His head felt light and he dipped back into the waiting support of Cameron's chest, he shivered at the bare skin against bare skin contact. She let him have a moment to get used the sitting position.

"What are we doing?" He asked in confusion.

She lifted his arm and slipped her head and shoulder underneath, wrapping it around her. "We're going to take a shower." He felt her other arm lift his strong legs over the edge of the bed. He flinched at the cool tile under foot as she turned him.

"I thought you wouldn't mind the smell."

"I don't … but the rest of the world isn't me."

He smirked tiredly as she moved off the bed and gently helped him stand on his own feet. He thought he was going to fall, his legs feeling like paper underneath the rest of the weight of his broad body. But Cameron pulled him against her. It was only then that John realized that it would take a lot more than just him to knock Cameron over. It was like he was leaning against the frame of a tank, stalwart and unmovable.

Walking toward the bathroom was challenging and his assistant was less than accommodating. Cameron's touches might have been gentle magic, but her patience was left to be desired. When she wanted something, Cameron tended to do all in her power to get it. That sometimes meant dragging John toward their shower, rather than waiting for him to find his feet again.

Once in the bathroom, she leaned him against the counter. "Where did you get the sedatives?" He asked as the air swirled from the motion of Cameron undressing in front of him.

"I've had them since Derek was shot by Vick… I took them from Charlie Dixon's bag." She explained. John felt her hands untie the knotted string of his lounge pants. He felt a chill when she gripped the waistbands of the pants and boxers and pulled them down. He felt the bare skin of her hips under his bracing hand as she helped him step out of them.

The spray of the crystal cool water over his face caused him to call out in surprise. Cameron stood behind him, her arms holding him steady. The way the wide spray of water thundered down on them, hitting John it seemed to wash away the four days in bed and returned him to everything that happened. The faces swirled in his mind. Janelle's intestines hanging limply from her cut, Todd's see through stab wound in the back of his head, and Jordon's smashed in face. He felt the cold eyes of his uncle, lifeless and frozen as they raked him with disapproval and shame.

Cameron turned him around, running her finger through his grown out heavily soaked locks, pushing them back. It was like a baptism, like hitting the fresh air after a long dark dive, the nightmares receding with the sensation. But where the nightmares fell away, the memories didn't. John wrapped his arms around Cameron's frame as she began scrubbing his eye lids with soap. In John's mind he could still see it all, so fresh, so new. The runaway train, Sarah and Derek trapped inside as it fell over the cliff. He saw his mother's beautiful frozen face and the skulls of the catacombs. He felt the burn of bruises all over his body, aching under the shower's spray.

"You can open them now …" Cameron framed his face with a brush of her trailing palm.

At first his vision was blurry from the exposer of light cascading from the small window in the shower. His eyes burnt with the mixture of the disinfecting soap and the scrubbing of a thorough cyborg. But slowly he focused and Cameron came into vision. Her long hair was soaked, pushed out of her face. Her flawless skin was slick and glimmering in the light, smooth and heavenly to the touch. Her eyes seemed stoic as usual, but hopeful.

It was just the sight of her that had done him in. From the hard stone of the catacombs, to the beating at the hands of the people he couldn't get out of his head. It was the visions of his mother, vengefully striking him for not saving her. These were the last images he had seen and after it all to see Cameron again, to be in the arms of the only person in this world he loved, and who loved him. He let it all overcome him.

She didn't say anything when his shoulders began to shake, she didn't tilt her head when he let out a strangled sob. She only wrapped her arms around his shoulders, pushing his head down into the crook of her neck and let him cry in her embrace under the shower's spray. In the quiet private moments between them, when John let go and finally let all the sorrow, trauma, and anger catch up with him. Her kisses and tight embrace was a silent promise that she would always be there.

* * *

The sun looked like a fiery ship making a gallant last stand on the horizon. The flaming decent lashed out the last roars of color before being purged of light as it sunk into the depths of the dark water in the distance. The double doors of the back porch of the small cabana showed the view of the falling day as a single candle cast shadows over the well-furnished living room.

A spiraling staircase led down to an orange tile ground floor, a duel entrances to a modern kitchen flanking the staircase against the far wall. A single recliner made of brown leather sat adjacent to the front of the home and a couch of leather as soft as sin faced the far wall behind the glass coffee table. The dim shadows of nature and candle flickered across the pair of silhouettes lying motionlessly on the couch.

John was flat on his back an arm behind his head as he stared out at the sunset, his eyes hard and his face grim. His bandaged arm was wrapped around a tucked in Cameron who lay curled up on top of him, her arm tossed over him, her head resting gently against his chest. Her emotionless eyes watched him worriedly. Every once in a while his fingers would twirl through a ringlet or he'd arch down and kiss her lips comfortingly.

Cameron had known this was John's time to recover from what happened. He hadn't told her about what he saw that night, not about Derek, or his mother. He wasn't sure she would understand why he saw them, and maybe she already knew what was going on. He had almost hallucinated his way to cardiac arrest. Also apart of him knew that maybe Cameron didn't want to push the trauma he had seen.

From what Cameron did tell him about what happened to him from her blood analysis, he had inhaled a pathogen that had stimulated a region of his brain that controlled his fears and anxieties, though Cameron was still unsure how an orb at the end of a cane could trigger it.

All John knew was that someone had used the one person all his life he had ever loved more than almost anything and used her against him. Someone took his memories of his love ones and those whose's memories he held in memoriam and twisted them till they nearly broke him. It wouldn't be something that would happen twice or to anyone else.

"We should leave, John …"

"No … not yet."

Cameron lifted her head. "Why?" She asked.

"I'm going to find the man who did this to me."

"And when you do?"

John just looked at her with a mask of stone eyes that guarded his true intentions. Cameron tightened her cheek and nodded.

"I'll make pancakes."


	3. Case Note 2

There was a brilliant light that was shown high above the whitewashed stone buildings of the Mediterranean setting. The deep warm rays of the sun glinted off the clear blue ocean created an effect of a great halo around the island as if god's sight was drawn to it. Some say it was the appeal of the small nation, but no one quite knew much about it. Mostly, because with the nightlife was the draw. Most visitors were passed out and others shunned the brightness of the island paradise to nurse their hangovers.

Nestled amongst the older buildings of the historical district of the town was a striking change of architecture in the form of a tall deco building made of a light brown brick and tinted windows. The coloring and style brought a strange modern contrast to the heat resistant, Spanish architecture around it. Connected to it on every corner were tall spire like towers with bars implanted on them. The only government building on the island housed the courtroom, jail, morgue, and police station. The day to day administration was held at the central palace where the King conducted the very minor government business.

The front desk officer of the small section of the police headquarters was used to the sight of all sorts of people. Locals complaining about permits and thievery, the tourists brought their own problems. He had dealt with the usual drunken rowdiness, and indecent behavior. Every once in a while an employee of some rich visitor would come to his desk to point out the problem of needing extra security for their employer, who deemed himself or herself too important and vulnerable. At the extreme there was the report of date rape and full on rape, which due to extradition rules meant that if it was between two mainlanders that the process would have to be handled between the accused's own federal investigation branches.

But when he looked up, he was surprised to find something he didn't expect. She was petite with a perfect ceaseless posture as straight as a board. She wore a tan tank top and a blue blouse half buttoned. Her dark hair was curled and in a ponytail and there was a stoic sternness to her beautiful face as she watched him behind tinted aviator sunglasses.

"Can I help you?" The man couldn't explain why, but he felt scared under her gaze.

She reached into the back pocket of her tight blue jeans and pulled out a brown wallet. Inside was a five pointed star pined to the bottom flap and an ID of a youthful girl smiling above it.

"Sarah Baum … US Marshal." She identified herself. "I'm here investigating the murder of Cameron Reese a United States Citizen, during the Café Shooting the other night." Her voice was deep and dark, he wasn't sure why but he almost felt like it didn't really belong to her.

The man frowned. "We weren't informed that a United States Marshall was coming." He turned toward his woefully outdated computer and began checking records. The green and black aged screen flickered.

"I just got in." Her deep voice had a stern reproach for him. He gulped a little and saw that they did have a Cameron Reese on file that had been murdered, but then realized why that name sounded familiar.

He nodded. "Si, You might have to wait a moment, her fiancé came just before you to see her … he didn't look so good." He gave a sad sigh.

But rather than be deterred by the information, she nodded. "Good, I have a few questions for him as well." She began walking down the hall with an oddly distinctive walk that he couldn't place.

The officer let out a noise of protest. "Please, Senorita … give him a moment." He begged her.

There was something menacing in the way she stopped. Swiftly, she turned back toward the desk. The walk, the stiff upper body and emotionless look in the tinted sunglasses, all of it made him take a step back.

"You think I should?" Her voice lacked anything but a cold disagreement in the rhetorical nature of her question.

His arm pits and forehead began to leak with a strong flop sweet under her unrelenting, frigid gaze. "I'll … I'll send an officer with you." He reached out toward his phone. He nearly wet himself when a slender hand shot out and pressed down on his with a sold grip of a heavy rock.

"Federal business." Her voice was hard as her grip.

He gulped and nodded vigorously. "Right … right." He slowly pulled his hand from under hers. "That way" He pointed down the hall toward the stairs.

She took a step back from the desk, collecting her badge. Then maybe the scariest of all, was when she gave him a perfect and pristine smile of flawlessly white teeth. "Thank you for your time." She turned her head slightly. But it melted away as she strode away. Leaving the desk officer to excuse himself to the bathroom.

The morgue was in the basement level of the tall deco government building. There was a corridor of off white tile and indistinct empty file rooms were lit by spotlights leading toward the double door at the far end of the very cold hallway. The word morgue was written twice on each frosted glass panel. One was in cursive English and to the right was printed Spanish.

Pushing the door open the girl still used her cover voice. "John?" She asked but got no response. "John?" She repeated walking into the freezing room. On both walls were sealed metal cubbies with letter tags on the seals. In the middle was a heavy wooden desk, lamp, and computer that was being searched by a man in a black t-shirt and old jeans. He wore a vintage brown coat made of supple leather, and sown on buttons.

"John?"

"Cameron"

"Yes?"

"Don't ever use _her_ voice again." John Connor didn't look up from the computer as he tacked away at the old key board. Cameron was taken aback by the cold calm anger in his voice.

"I'm sorry" She sounded sincere. The cyborg had thought that if she wore Sarah's clothing that she had decided to take for herself, that John would be comforted by the familiar sight and smell of his mother, the same with using her voice. But the effect was opposite of her hopes, he glared at her attire, but had not said anything. But the use of her voice was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Though she apologized, it did nothing to temper his cold attitude. He showed no intent of remorse in how he addressed her, or regret in his tone. Unplugging a USB device from the computer with his bandaged hand, he moved toward her. "Slot B4" he began searching the wall for the right seal. Still recovering from his harsh words she was cautious about getting in his way, but when she found it in the second row a few feet from her, she walked toward it.

"Here" she waited for him to arrive.

Something had happened to John since the night she nearly lost him. He had changed or rather the toxin that had been injected into his system had changed him. She knew that it was hallucinogenic from what she could analyze from his blood. He never said what he saw, but she was sure that it had something to do with Sarah and Derek. But she knew that at some point this was going to happen, had there been toxins or not, John was going to move into a different stage of mourning. But this time he was a lot different, he was angrier, brooding … he was like the man she knew in the future, but pushed to the extreme. Had she been human, she might be scared of what he might do next.

He pulled open the slot and rolled out the slab with a roll of metallic ticking. Inside was a man Cameron had never seen before. He was somewhere between her and John's age, He had been handsome with a youthfully athletic build. She suddenly noticed why John was interested in him, his eyes were glued shut by a blue tinted mucus that had hardened into flakes. There were also blue stains under his nose. The island had to outsource coroners from the mainland and much like the false records of the non-existent corpse of Cameron Reese, the Coroner for the security guard mysteriously found himself delayed.

Reaching into the inner pockets of the Connor family leather coat, John extracted a plastic vile with a cue tip inside. He began swabbing the former security guard's eyes. "Cam, go to the glass cabinet, they took a blood sample from his body, before they froze him." He ordered distractedly. She nodded and strode to the see through drawers. "Montez, Ricardo" John answered her as she turned to ask the question.

The red vile was frosted when Cameron held it up to study. Her brow furrowed when she saw a strange tint of blue. When she magnetized her vision, she saw hints of metallic coloring, a detail someone with a microscope and years of university would've needed to find.

From down the hall the clack of heels paced toward morgue that John and Cameron where in the middle of the pillaging for information. Cameron stuck the blood vile inside her black satin push up bra and lowered her body temperature to accommodate the sample. She paced toward the glass door and pushed it open slightly to see through.

"Who is it?" John asked distractedly.

She squinted. "The woman from the café …" She turned back.

John was in the middle of swabbing the blue mucus under the nose. "The one that Montez was trying to gun down?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Shit" John placed caps on both plastic tubes, pushed them in his inner pocket. He looked around a moment and then opened a random morgue drawer. "Get in!" he ordered in a whisper.

"Why?" She asked with a frown.

John gritted his teeth. "Because the last time she saw you, you were dead! Do you really want her to come in here and see a zombie stealing blood?" He hissed.

Cameron tightened her cheek and glared. "It's bad luck in Native American culture for someone to lay where the dead …" she began to protest.

"I don't care what the Indian's say … get in there!" He pulled the white sheet off the slab. Whirling to the sounds of heels nearly to the door she pulled off her sunglasses and handed them to John before lying on the slab. John quickly covered her to the chin with the white sterilized sheet. He pushed her inside and was closing the seal as the door opened.

The blond woman wore a sun dress made of thin material accented by sparkling embroidery. Her light silvery blond hair was in a tight bun. Though her Spanish face was thoroughly beautiful it seemed somewhat marred by the aristocratic nose that looked like a bird's beak.

"Hello …" She offered in a gently mournful inflection. There was a strange local flavor to her fluid musical voice.

John cleared his throat and did his best to play the meek mourning loved one, but he just couldn't. Had it been a couple of days ago, he wouldn't have to try. Now his anger dominated almost anything, it was something that could be felt as seen in his expression. An after effect of the poisoning, or maybe it was just something that evolved from the sorrow.

Before he could answer, she made a frightened noise at the sight of the man in the open drawer. He wanted to face palm at the idiotic feat of not closing it before she got inside. She studied him closely.

"Is that him?"

John nodded. "Yeah …" He growled. She looked up at him and tilted her head in surprise.

"Did you open this?" She asked gently.

At first he was going to tell the story of how there was a lab technician that just left. But John knew he couldn't carry that story in his state of mind. "I wanted to see him." He said with a vengeful cut under his voice. Had John got the chance to ever catch up with the man responsible for his mother and uncles death's he would want to see him on a slab like this, dead and frozen … like his mother and Derek. Forever a corpse, put there by John's vengeance.

"I can understand." She nodded. "When my mother died ..." She trailed off, wandering toward the desk away from the bodies.

"You lost yours too?" He asked.

She nodded distractedly. "You can't imagine how long I wished it was more than just child birth that had taken her, I wish there was someone to blame for it, other than my younger brother." She sighed sadly.

John watched her. "Does it ever go away?" He asked the old veteran of the feelings he was only now experiencing.

She smiled sadly. "No … but one day you'll find that right someone and it'll hurt so much less." She nodded gazing off in the distance. John could almost see the face of the man that she had been dancing with the other night on the far wall she was looking too.

The youth nodded and drew his gaze toward the seal that Cameron was inside. It had been true, Cameron had been there since the beginning, and while the hurt had gone on and on, it was blunted in her presence. Much like that night in the balcony she had always been there to pull him back into the light from the shadows he had grown fond of in the aftermath. Till the night of the Catacombs he was starting to remember the taste of a laugh on his lips and the feeling of life in his lungs with her innocent mission to try everything in the festival around them.

"I'm sorry …" She said with a sad smile as he walked toward her. "Here I am gloating about being a bride tonight, while you've just lost yours." She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"It's fine …" He nodded.

She sighed. "No, it's not … it shouldn't have happened. Such a delicate flower." She seemed emotional.

John snorted. "Delicate …" he chuckled. "You didn't really know her." He smiled with a shake of his head.

The woman laughed. "You're probably right, if she lived the way she danced. Then there was such life and humanity in such a fiery soul." She eulogized.

John kept a straight face, looking away. "Yeah … humanity." He nodded. "It's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Cameron." He said it loud enough to give his companion inside the cubby some amusement.

Maybe there was too much amusement, because behind him there was a noise of cluttering from a slab. The blond woman made a sudden gasp and he eyes widened. John sighed without turning around, he cursed himself again for trying to joke with Cameron who had too much of a blunted sense of humor. She had probably mistaken his comment as some sort of signal to come out.

The woman began to back away, mouth open in a muted scream. John cursed under his breath and held his arms out, a defensive motion to calm her down. "Look …" began to talk slowly. "I can totally explain this." The fact was that he could and she wouldn't believe him. Or he could lie and she'd get the wrong impression about all of it.

Luckily he didn't have too, because an ice cold hand took a harsh grip against the leather of his coat. John turned and was shocked frozen by the sight of the naked appearance of Ricardo Montez's reanimated corpse.

"What the fu …"

The dead man took an iron grip on John's coat and threw him forward. He tried to find his feet but it wasn't in time before he fell over the table. He crashed head first into the roller chair that gave way under his weight and landed with an unceremoniously thud on his forehead. He sat up and heard the confused throb of his head, the slamming of steel giving way, and the scream of the bride to be. John found his feet, feeling wobbly as he surveyed the scene. The naked dead man had cornered the woman his arms outstretched toward her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if trying to wish him away.

Moving into action, John leapt onto the desk and used the high ground to propel himself into the air. Like the first time he met Montez he used his large upper body to his advantage driving the man into the wall away from the Castellan woman. He grabbed ahold of the dead man's head and slammed it against the wall, pinning him there for a moment.

"Run!" he snarled to the woman, who had slid to the floor in shock for a moment. "Run!" He repeated louder. The woman, startled by the voice took off, though something told John that she wasn't going to get help at all. Distracted for a moment, he lost track of his opponent, who broke out of his grip and slammed a fist into John's rib. The shot loosened John enough for the naked man to hit him across the face. He fell backwards as the rabid man marched on him.

Suddenly a petite hand snatched the dead man from the neck like a dog with a chew toy. Cameron threw him with an easy pivot. He flew across the room like a rag doll smashing into the far wall, leaving a spider webbing of cracks through the drywall on impact. John turned from the girl standing in front of him defensively to where he had sealed her in, to find the steel cover bent and hanging from a single hinge.

The dead man, as if not feeling the strangulation from the cyborg or the body shattering impact of being thrown against a bricked wall, stood up. Cameron didn't flinch or move in readiness when he charged at her. All it took was the force of an open palm that landed right in the center of the man's face. He flew several feet in the air landed with a heavy, dead slam against the polished floor. He didn't get up again.

Cameron seemed almost casual when she approached John on the floor. She offered him a hand, to which he took. He was pulled to his feet alarmingly easy by the girl with the strength to stop an eighteen wheeler. She stood in his personal space as they looked on the remains of Ricardo Montez, whose nose was completely caved into his skull, bones and cartilage impaled in the front of his brain.

John sighed and shook his head. "Had him where I wanted him." He panted distractedly.

"I'm sure." Cameron nodded staring at her first zombie.

* * *

The light of the late afternoon cast an amber color across the orange tile of the small two story Cabana, a comforting breeze flooding through the open back porch doors rustling the forest of fake foliage posted through-out the comfortably quiet temporary home.

Sitting in the shadows that had gathered in the corner of the cabana away from any sort of light was the brooding silhouette of John Connor. He was slumped in the red leather chair, elbow propped rigidly against the arm rest, his bandaged fist balled underneath his nose. He stared blankly into the empty living room, his mind a thousand miles away.

From down the spiral staircase, Cameron padded barefoot across the decorated patterns of blue and white on the tile steps. She paused a moment watching the man she loved stew in the juices of dangerous emotions that had unleashed everything Sarah ever taught him in pursuit of the person who had nearly broke him. Cameron watched him go from vulnerable, trapped in the ruins of his defenses to over building them, poring almost a second wall of concrete around himself. She wondered if he might be putting so much into the pursuit of this Voodoo priest knowing that for the moment, the pursuit of vengeance and justice for Sarah and Derek is out of their hands. She began to think what would have happened if she had hit the Voodoo priest, if his technology hadn't disabled her targeting systems, would John have been cured of this anger? She thought of Jordon Cowen and the effect on John … and knew better.

Her lover didn't seem to notice her as she strode across his sight line. She gave him a moment before barging in on his inner thoughts. When she finally reached him, she held the blood sample out toward him. John blinked finally and slowly lifted his dark emerald eyes to her face, his expression was the question.

"Nanites"

John sat up a little taller in the seat. "Nanites?" He frowned hard, it was obviously not something he was not expecting in a hundred guesses. He took the vile from her and found his feet. "Are you serious?" He asked walking toward the porch.

She followed him to the light where he lifted it up and checked. "Yes … I had suspected it when I first saw the blood sample. But then when Ricardo Montez attacked you, it was almost obvious." She watched him look in vain for the microscopic machines.

"He wasn't after me." John corrected distractedly. "What do you know about them?" he turned toward her.

"They're microscopic machines that are commanded by a more powerful epicenter of control, an AI chip, or they're programed with certain orders. I have them inside me as well." She watched John seem more interested than squeamish at the thought.

"You do?"

"Yes, my chip recognizes damage to my outer layers of flesh and dispatches the Nanites in my blood to repair that damage. I would equate it to the cells in your body. Though these Nanites are quite primitive compared to mine."

"How come when Ellison was hunting for Cromartie, the FBI labs didn't pick up on anything?" He asked.

"Nanites are the size of blood cells and are camouflage within the blood, to any FBI lab they'd only read it as synthetic." She explained.

"So say if these Nanites were programed to follow a glowing rod and wiring on the ceiling?" John quirked an eyebrow.

"More to the point they were reprogramed to control brain function. If they were programmed to carry information that someone should be killed, and this target was in close proximity they would trigger."

John frowned. "But the man was dead." He protested.

"The Nanites aren't." She corrected.

"So … Cyborg Voodoo Zombie?"

Cameron paused. "Yes …" She nodded unsurely. "Cyborg Voodoo Zombie." She reached into her pocket.

John tossed the vile up and snatched it out of the air, a frown of trouble all over his features. "If it's that easy to take control someone's brain …" he trailed off.

"It's not." Cameron assured, holding the tube with a blue cue-tip. "The Nanites were mixed into an airborne powder." She gave him a poignant look.

The youth gave a clear of his throat, setting the blood vile on the desk mounted by his laptop. "Like the one that I inhaled." He replied. Cameron tightened her cheek as John dropped into the office chair at the living room desk.

"The powder enters your blood stream and attacks the part of your brain that carries all the things that you push to the back of your head."

"And brings them to the forefront in looped fast forward." He finished for her.

His cyborg companion nodded. "With your brain in disarray, the Nanites implant and you have no choice but to obey." She replied.

There was quiet lull. "Then what did he want me to do?" John asked, flexed his fractured hand in thick bandages. Seeing the worry deep inside, Cameron walked forward and touched his hand gently.

"You'll never know …" She reassured him. "The Nanites have a small window to stick, if you fought them as hard as you did then they would've rejected you." He reached out and held her hand. Leaning down he rubbed his cheek against the top of it, seemingly relieved at the news.

Swiveling around in his chair, he brought his laptop from screensaver. Cameron saw that there had been a running a program that she didn't have chance to see the details of. John brought up a search engine that didn't quite look like a website from the internet.

He pulled out from under the desk and moved Cameron in front of him. "Type in the chemical formula for the toxin." He compelled her. She blinked at him, not understanding what he was getting at, but she did as he told her. Her fingers moved over the keyboard quickly, filling the blank space with an equation of numbers and letters in a formula format. When she was done she tapped enter.

"What is this?" She squinted. The screen turned blue, a great loading wheel turning slowly as the program analyzed the information.

John leaned back. "Remember when we installed all those roving back doors in several university archives?" He asked.

"Yes"

"Well, I created a search program that links all of their archives together." He motioned his head to the computer. "Whatever we type in there, it'll give us everything that six of the biggest libraries in the country have on anything related to it." He leaned back and placed his hands behind his head, looking quite pleased with himself.

His computer screen blipped and information began streaming in segments. He gave her hip a light kiss, before gently moving her out of the way, so he could read the text. Cameron took her place at the right side of his chair, her hand resting on the back.

"Azul Medinoche …" She read aloud.

"The blue midnight …" John translated. "Yeah, I heard of this before … back when Mom and I were hiking in Central America." He said skimming through the information as he scrolled. "The Mayans used to use it for coming of age rituals so that a boy could conquer his worst fears and face them in battle." John seemed to be looking for something in general as he scrolled down. "There's several international bans on the selling or trade of the flower in most countries." He stopped and began reading.

"Why?"

"The effects are extreme, a little will make you anxious, a good dose will give you hallucinations … but a lot will push you to …"

"Cardiac arrest." Both John and Cameron traded knowing looks. He nodded in conformation, his eyes narrowing into a glare at the flashes of memories.

"The flower it's self is not illegal in the country of origin, it's used for cultural ceremonies, vision quests and alike …" The young man leaned back and tugged his chin in thought.

Cameron stared at the computer screen. "The dew points in the flower's granulated form that I found in Ricardo and your systems, suggests that they were freshly ground as of a week ago." She suggested to a deeply in thought John.

"Well he couldn't have gotten past costumes with a big bushel on him without a hazmat suit … it's possible that he had it shipped to him." He minimized the search and went back to the program that Cameron didn't get to see the first time.

"What is this?" She saw at least fifty files filled with information.

"While I was waiting for you in the Morgue, I hacked into the Island's federal network and download anything might be useful. Police reports, Business Permits … and Custom's inventory." He pulled up a forest of names and numbers on a long spread sheet. "Cam, go get the phone book … look up all the flower shops in the area." He began reading the first several lines.

"There are three … "Angelica's roses, Hernández bouquets, and Florencio Para Arriba" Cameron listed off. Her companion swiveled his chair to face her, his eyebrow quirked in confusion and amusement at the accent she spoke with.

"I don't sleep."

"I'd say" He said giving her a sly inappropriate smirk. Though it had been a crack at their nocturnal activities and their multiple occurrences in succession, Cameron thought it was nice to see the coy grin on his face as he went back to the laptop. He began typing, and as he progressed the list began to shorten greatly.

"What are you looking for?"

He sighed thoughtfully. "If our Voodoo friend is having his mountain flowers shipped here, then all I have to do is find a manifest of imports from the country of origin to the flower, and then cross reference our flower shops." He explained.

"But the flower is illegal here."

"True … but do you think that the common dock worker is going to know the difference between Azul Medinotche and your run of the mill blue flower? Hell, we had to look up the compound just to find it." He worked on a sub-window for a moment longer, before the computer began inventory on its own.

With a few moments to spare, he looked out over the ocean longingly. Cameron tilted her head when he began to smirk sadly.

"Hey, do you remember that one mission to that big college in Alabama?" as he spoke, his gaze was snared far away.

"I do." She nodded.

"We enrolled you for like a month undercover?"

"Yes, I pledged to Kappa Beta Delta. An evangelical sorority house. "

"Only you, the most sophisticated killing machine in existence could end up with the bible thumpers and sexual repressed."

"I liked their house."

"Mom got so mad …" he laughed.

"No, Sarah was annoyed, she became furious when you snuck into the sorority house so that I could give you the layout of the archives and fell asleep. They called her, saying that they caught me in bed with a strange boy."

"Yeah, well you were the one that crawled in with me."

"I had to keep up appearances."

"Sure …" John smirked. "Man … she read us the riot act and then decided that it would be better if she went undercover with you as the house mother. The mother of the future … world's greatest fighter, mentor to a bunch of super hormonal southern belles." He laughed. "You remember that wardrobe that she had to wear? Those fuzzy pull over v-neck cardigans, matching preppy skirts and satin bows in her hair?"

"She had to lead the breakfast, lunch, and dinner prayers … and council us in the ways of our misguiding sins." She watched John chuckle. "She used to describe to me in detail how she was going to murder all of us."

"Yeah … then when Derek and I finally got into that damn archive room, and planted the backdoor ... Derek tripped the alarm and we had to split up. I picked you up inside the church, but mom missed the signal … Derek had to go get her, while we lead the police to the boondocks."

"Yes, He ran up to Sarah in the middle of the open air Easter Service. She was so happy to get away from everyone there that she tossed her Easter bonnet and kissed Derek full on the lips in view of the entire congregation. I believe they rode off together on a stolen Harley."

John began to laugh, laugh harder than she had seen him laugh before. She smiled and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as he wiped away a tear of regret and longing for the past. When he was done, he caught her eye and he smiled sadly. For all the bluster and hard words for her earlier in the day, he was happy to have at least kept one thing from those unknown happy days that could remember them with him.

When he finally got back to the computer there was a single name on several manifests from a certain country.

* * *

Florencio Para Arriba was not the oldest flower shop on the island, but it was by far the most popular. One of the many appeals of the shop was its selection, ranging far and wide, with the most exotic arrangements to be found. These factors were exactly why Florencio Para Arriba was easily the culprit amongst all the rest of the flower shops in the area to be carrying the midnight flower. Located in the heart of the business district, there was a strange lull in the evening that came with a large ceremony that drew much of the local population to the historical district.

John and Cameron considered themselves lucky as they walked casually toward the glass building in the corner of the large stone plaza, a gushing ivory fountain of white stone echoing through the silence in the center of commerce. On the large tinted glass window was the name of the flower boutique in big gold lettering. The reflections of exotic flowers were pressed up against the smoky glass.

"Closed"

John glowered as his companion read the sign aloud. He sighed and turned to her, to which she responded to his silent question with an uncharacteristic shrug. He smirked bitterly and reached into his pocket. "Not for long" He muttered pulling out Sarah's Lock picking kit. He had mourned the loss of his somewhere in the iced wilderness of New York, but had found Sarah's to be an acceptable replacement. He knelt in front of the covered glass door and unzipped the pouch. John observed the lock, tying to pick the right combination of tools.

SHRUNK!

There was a loud clatter from inside. His eyes shot up to find the petite hand of his partner gripping the door handle were she turned it effortlessly. He stood and watched his Cyborg protector blink as she waited for him.

"Or we could do that …"

She opened the door and strode inside. John gave her a moment before following, only to see that she had stopped several paces. Both investigators came face to face with a collection of four men in white security polo shirts shadowed in the diming light of the evening. Two were armed with black night sticks and all of them seemed to be crying blue mucus from their tear ducts.

Cameron turned to John. "Right place?"

"Right place." John confirmed.

The cyborg strode forward, enticing the first unarmed man to make a move. He made no noise, but looked fierce as he rushed in attack. Cameron side stepped the man's line of assault and close-lined him mid stride. Catching his neck on the stalwart forearm, he hacked and choked all the way to the floor. The machine grabbed him by the hem of the shirt and flung him over rows of bouquets of flowers and tables of potted plants. He landed on another security guard, both going down to the chorus of the high pitched breaking of clay pots.

Two of the other guards seemed to fearlessly move to assault Cameron while she was preoccupied. Her show of strength seemed to be ineffective to their inhibitions. Somewhere in the back of John's mind he knew that Cameron was safe from fists and batons. But he didn't care, because he was going to join in this fight whither what they could do hurt her or not.

John took three momentum building strides and kicked a metal insecticide can straight into the gut of the lead man. While falling to his knees, a line of drool dripping from his mouth, his back up raised his night stick to strike. John ducked his horizontal swing and hit him with a powerful upper cut. Both man and club landed in a forest of lilies. Getting up slowly during the second bought, the first guard leapt at John. In one fluid movement, using the man's momentum against him, John caught the guard mid-air and judo threw him over head.

CRASH!

The Security guard burst through the tinted glass, landing with a sickening thud on the white cobble stone street. Hearing the grunt from the lilies, John picked up the fallen night stick and slammed it across the last security guards face who was struggling to find his feet. The spray of blood, and two front molars wasn't enough though. Filled with a fiery rage that had been inside him since long before coming to the island, but set to kinder inside him after the incident in the catacombs. John dropped to a knee, taking ahold of them man's collar, and began to pummel the guard's face with the night stick.

"John …"

He felt a restraining hand take a hold of his wrist and pull him back to standing. He whirled, ready to strike. But he stopped when he saw Cameron watching him without fear, whither it was because she knew he couldn't hurt her or if she knew he wouldn't, he wasn't sure. She flicked her hard gaze to the baton. He followed only to feel his chest heaving and the shaking of someone who just lost control. Through those brown eyes he also realized that he could've killed the man with the swollen face, bleeding from every hole in his face.

"You got him." Her voice was a perfect deadpan. She walked away and did not address the craze in her lover's eyes.

He looked down at his hand. "Yeah … I got him." He sighed. He threw away the baton and tried not the show the fear he felt of himself in that moment.

The botany shop was made of mostly glass. There was an uncomfortable humidity to the green house designed business that seemed to get worse as they moved inward. The collection of plants that over hung from the ceiling and strewn along the walls, seemed to give the shop the appearance of a natural overgrowth … a jungle of the exotic, rather than a place of business. John took one side of a large serenity fountain, ringed with rocks.

"Cam …" John whispered to his partner. She stopped midstride and turned toward him. He pointed downward toward the pool. Inside was a collection of algae at the rim, and the floating corpse of a Japanese Koi fish, below in the shimmering water were the collection of bones from the rest of its brethren.

"What happened?"

"They ate each other."

"Why …?"

The young man drew his colt from his back hip. "The owner wasn't there to feed them." He motioned his weapon toward a back office entrance enclosed by vines. Cameron nodded and casually stalked forward toward it, while John disappeared into the tangle of plants. Her foot plowed through wooden office door with a splintering crash, when she stepped inside, both hands were armed with twin Glock pistols. A second later, John flew from the breach in a timed two pronged assault.

But what they found was an empty office, there were several manila folders on top of a desk covering several large blue paper rolls. Cameron took a large sweep with her arms, looking like search lights of death. On the other side of the spacious office were empty plastic containers filled with green steams. On a small kitchenette counter was a cutting board with a meat tenderizer, and a chopping knife, stained blue.

"He's gone …" Cameron announced.

Her partner nodded grimly. "Yeah …" He holstered his weapon. She followed suit, turning toward the kitchenette. Neither needed to say what the other was going to do, it was unneeded.

The blue prints were the first thing that John studied moving the files aside. They were the outlines of the big cathedral down in the historical district, but John saw that they were thin and flimsy. His eyes narrowed as he realized that they were only part of a large piece of parchment. Pulling them up, he saw a much thicker schematic of some sort of tunnel system.

"The Catacombs …" John said aloud thoughtfully. Dropping the cathedral plans again, he studied it a moment, before it hit him. He pressed the thinner paper, against the thicker lines of the Catacombs.

"It looks like he cut his toxin here …" Cameron called from behind him.

"Well … it looks like the Catacombs, are a networked under the church." He reported back.

The cyborg was crouching staring at an empty container. "What is he doing with them?" She asked.

Shaking his head, John looked at a large lobby. "I don't know … But it looks like the room I fought him, is directly under the main chapel." He traced his finger of the outline. He flashed back to the cavern underneath, suddenly remembering the clear wiring in the frame of the ceiling. The Voodoo alter that he had thrown Janelle through was actually directly were the alter should be in the cathedral. "He's recreating the church." He said to himself thoughtfully.

"John …" Cameron called. In front of her was a trough of dirt, several mushrooms, began appearing above the dirt. She began digging through the soil with the stained kitchen knife.

"Don't" John went back to the papers, opening a file. "Leave him in there for the police." He said with a disconnected coldness.

"Him?" She asked, but after looking at the mushrooms again. It dawned on her with the memories of the fish, just who was under the soil. "Oh" She took a step back. Walking back toward John, she watched him pour through files, eyes skimming the content. "What are they?" she asked.

"Recites … transaction records …" He listed off. "For a state wedding …" He stopped mid-sentence. Cameron followed his eyes sight toward a billboard in front of the desk. Pinned to it was a picture of a family. There was a handsome man, with blond hair and peach skin, in his arms where two cute children. A little girl in a pure white confirmation dress, her hair was in long silver blond tresses covered by a lacy veil. Next to her was a darker skinned boy with a bowl cut of straight black hair. Each member of the trio was marked by their beak like aristocratic nose. He took the picture off the board and stared at it.

"What is it?" She asked.

"Cam …" He didn't seem to hear her. "When you were over there, what did you find?" He put down the picture of the family, and began flipping through the file again.

She frowned. "Three smuggling cases were filled with flower steams, there were four others that had nothing but trace peddles inside." She reported as John flipped toward a page inside.

"The bride bought at least two hundred flowers from the shop." He held the file out to her. As Cameron looked through it, John looked over the blue prints, tracing the outline of the chapel again.

"I know what he's planning to do." He picked up the kitchen knife and slammed it down on the chapel.


	4. Conclusion and Summery

In the silence of the dusk that settled on the streets of the old town, older than many of the most powerful nations of the world, a man on stilts walked carefully, avoiding the cracks in the stone. He held a torch in one hand, keeping balance with the other. Out of all the people that would've loved the rumored world of what could've been, a future captained by Prince Hector, it was the man that lit the street lamps of the island. He couldn't remember how many times he cracked his head and shoulder against the cobble stone doing a job that modern technology dwarfed over a hundred years ago. The only way that he could forgive missing the royal wedding tonight was if Princess Maria and Robert Good … something would install electric street lamps.

In the distance he could hear the sound of feet pounding on stone in rapid motion. The lamplighter twisted carefully, turning down the street to find nothing but the limited reach of gas flame and the glint of the sea in the full moon above. He turned down the corner toward the cathedral where the lights inside colored the buildings facing the stained glass a brilliant cornucopia of odd shapes. The old man's face scrunched as the pounding of stone continued. There was a crash from behind him and the caw of a dozen chickens crying in protest. He turned again to find a wooden cage fall from a dark alley into lamp light. He saw four fat hens began to chortle and scatter as a tall, muscular shadow rolled from the same alley as the cage.

"Why are there chickens stacked in an alley?!" The shadow landed on his stomach as he shouted in frustration and disgust back down the tight corridor between two old buildings. "Who even does that?!" He shouted again.

Right on the heels of his shouts the slim figure of a girl rushed from the same alley. She took a moment to kick one of the hens out of the way, before helping the larger male up. "Someone who was pressed for time and space …" She kicked away another hen as her companion brushed himself off. ",,, and doesn't like chickens." She added standing in his personal space.

"Couldn't imagine anyone who's like that?" He grunted sarcastically taking a moment to observe her action. At his comment she merrily tilted her head. He grunted putting pressure on his hobbled leg till he could use it again.

"Come on, Cam … _Onward and upon this charge, cry god for Harry, England, and St. George_!" the young man called, jogging to build up momentum again.

"John, we're not English …"

"Yeah … well it still counts if mom was born there."

"Sarah was English?"

"No, but Grams was … Plus there had to be a reason mom tried to force feed us figgy pudding on Christmas."

"She never tried to force feed me figgy pudding on Christmas …"

"Weren't we lucky?" The young man scoffed. His sarcasm was bitter as they began sprinting past the lamplighter who watched the young American couple fly past him.

He craned his head tracking them as they hiked up hill toward the Cathedral. Something about their rapid pace and the stress in the younger man's voice left the older uneasy.

"Late for the Wedding?" He called after them.

"If there is one, I'd be very surprised." The young man called without looking back.

The old man bit his lip. "Then where's the fire?"

This time the girl stopped. "In your hand." She tilted her head in confusion. Her pause was temporary before a hand grabbed her by the back of her tight jeans and tugged her out of the lamplight were running feet echoed again.

The old man raised an eyebrow and observed his torch a moment. Then he shrugged mundanely muttering to himself.

"She's not wrong."

* * *

A wedding was supposed to be the happiest moment in a girl's life, or at least that was what Maria thought as she stood at the entrance of the cathedral in the center of the island community that she had grown up in. But after the events of the last week she wasn't sure she could. From the shooting at Rosalinda's café, and then whatever she saw at the morgue … it felt like she was being watched. Since this morning she had been jumping at shadows and looking too hard into them. It was like every time she was exposed the cold breath of a phantom was breathing down her neck. A phantom from her past that had settled into the gloom of her mind.

Princess Maria Monaco was the heir of the small island nation, one of the last with a ruling monarchy for a functional government. But when you were the heir to such a small insignificant nub on the face of a much larger world, Maria had to rely on modern sensibilities to gain the public's ear. Her party girl image kept her people on the map. Escapades with American movie stars and British billionaires, crashing sports cars, and fighting heiresses in clubs was far from her personality really. However, in this day and age, any publicity was good publicity, and if people were talking about her and where her poor old Papi went wrong, they would eventually want a piece of that lifestyle to find their answers. Sometimes she resented that she was thought of as another airhead with a pretty face and a fashion line. But when she dreamed of something else in life of being herself… the tame, soft hearted beauty her father raised her to be … all she could feel was the weight of losing the country in a world slowly becoming out of reach to her people. She thought of all the starving children in the street, and the sharks circling … outside interests looking to steal the place from her family.

There was a time she thought she wouldn't mind being deposed. When she was young and carefree, rebellious against her role, Maria thought how much she wanted to get away from this place. But as maturity overcame childish dreams and fears she began to slowly accept the life bestowed on her by name and a title inherited by blood. At first she thought that maybe she'd take over just till some sort of reform comes along and she becomes a ceremonial figure head. A few years of thinking later and maybe she'd look over the island till the people choose what government they want. A few months later, she couldn't trust those who wanted the ruling position. Who would look after the children in the orphanages? Who would protect the people from abuses of Colonel Montero? He could get drunk on power and abuse the locals if not put in his place. By now Maria still didn't want this island, but she felt like she just couldn't trust anyone to leave so many lives in incapable hands.

Sometimes she thought that maybe Father was wrong to exile her younger brother Hector. He was always much smarter than her and he truly loved this island. Sometimes her father thought he may have loved it too much. He always thought that it was meant for more. She could never see what he meant by it, that was till she saw that it wasn't the Island he was referring to but more of himself. Like Maria, he had left for America to be educated, and when he had returned he had confronted their father with such ideas. He had earned degrees in chemical and mechanical engineering. He had spoken to their father of friends and investors ready to turn their peaceful island into the new century: chemical plants and mining operations. Father resisted his ideas; he wanted to keep their island the way it has always been, a beacon of an easier, peaceful way of life. For it to always be a reminder to embrace the past. In their most heated moment their father told him that he had become infected with the sickness of greed and avarice, ordering him to leave his sight. She remembered reaching for Hector's hand like she had in their childhood as he stormed out. But he refused as he left, vowing that he would return someday.

For the last week he had been on her mind. She wasn't sure why, but he was. She would contact him if she could, but it had been years since anyone had seen him. A part of her was scared of her brother's machinations and dreams of metal and pollution. But another part of her remembered the pressure that their father had always put on both of them. Could he really blame Hector for only doing what he wanted both of them to do: think of their country's future?

Maria felt the white cobbled street underfoot, letting the soles of her slippered high heels dig into the grooves between the stone as she waited nervously. Her bright eyes turning toward the sinking sun in the west, the last shades of orange defiantly lingering in a dark sky scattered with silver blinking pinholes in a curtain of darkness above. This was her last moment, a deep breath before the plunge. She looked to the ocean just visible between the old Spanish architecture and thought of South America, Africa, Montana … it's all out there waiting for her. One last reprieve before she faced down the demon that had chased her all of her life.

But then she thought of her Robert with his sharp, piercing blue eyes, perfect curling dark hair with a streak of white, and implacably comforting smile, and his gentle hands, standing at the alter where she was baptized and confirmed. She thought of the priest about to marry her, a man to whom she had confessed all of her sins to since she was five, who knew everything about her. She never thought about it till now, but when Robert placed a ring on her finger, that was the end of her days of pretending. In a strange way being married to a man that she loved in front of those closest to her would free her from the shackles of a the public role she never wanted.

Feeling a swelling in her chest, she suddenly felt light headed as if a large weight had been lifted off her. For so long she thought of nothing but escaping this life set up for her by her father, by the need of her people. Now she didn't need to, now she could be Maria Monaco and live in a world of her own choosing. She couldn't keep the grin off her face, it was so big and her teeth glinted in the dying light.

THUNK!

* * *

The cathedral was brilliantly lit with hundreds of candles. The condensed chapel of the ancient palace of worship was built by missionaries , brought by Spanish explorers, almost three hundred years ago. The intimate glow of the wicks gave a strange and enchanting effect to the barely visible gold painted stars carved on the dome ceiling of the chapel.

The benches were filled with collections of foreign dignitaries from smaller countries, trading partners and allies. Together with them sat a larger crowd of social members of society- debutants, heiresses, and social climbers. It was the biggest event in their materialistic world in many years in this part of the world, and those that weren't interested in those sort of things tended to come for the location to enjoy a tropical vacation. But when the music swelled and the march began, they all found their feet.

Every eye was turned to the back doors as they swung open and the bride strode out in a white wedding dress. The smooth silk was form fitting, pooling at her feet in the popular mermaid style of Southern Europe. A lace veil hid her face as her curtain of dark ringlets fell down her back. There was something captivating about her lithe figure in the flawless material; her posture was perfect and unyielding as she matched step with music. It wasn't just all eyes that were drawn to her, it was all hearts and all minds. On her wedding day there couldn't have been a more beautiful princess in the world.

Waiting for her at the altar was not the man that she had been seen with at the café, but a handsome older man that stood in dapper tuxedo; his hands were covered by white gloves and in his grip was an ornate cane decorated with a golden pummel of a two headed eagle. His dark hair, marked with a white streak, was slicked back. His goatee was neatly trimmed, also showcasing a distinguished steak of white. But the most striking feature of all was the man's sharp and piercing blue eyes that seemed to cut away the walls one built and get to the heart of the matter. On the top step in front of the altar, a priest stood with his back to the crowd. Tall and thin, the priest's long tails coat reached his knees and he wore a black wide-brim hat.

When the bride arrived at the altar, the groom held his hands out and took hers. He couldn't help but reach out to her, caressing her waist, feeling the suppleness of her flesh and sinfully smooth material she was wrapped in, igniting a private flame inside him. The older man began to push her long veil back.

"Not just yet …", the smooth, accented voice of the faceless priest stopped the groom. The thin man spread his arms out, like a conductor of an orchestra silencing the music. Suddenly the chapel went dead silent. "No princess wants the last anyone sees of her to be an ugly face of horror." The priest turned and under the wide brim hat revealed a black and white painted face of a skull, a shirtless chest underneath the priests coat, yet still wearing the white collar of the cloth.

The groom let out a startled grunt, taking a step back, but both crowd and bride seemed stoic. The skull-faced imposter tilted his head, watching the bride with almost sympathetic eyes. "I'm sorry it has to end this way …" He almost sounded emotional, "But destiny waits for no one, not even family." He hooked his foot under an object under the pulpit and kicked it up. His metallic staff glinted in the candlelight as he caught it.

The Voodoo priest cleared his throat. "Such a sad state of affairs …" He sighed, the blue orb at the end of his cane began glowing a swirling blue. "…the bride and her king torn apart by her own guests." As if on cue the sound of shoes and high heels on tile echoed through the chapel. All of the guests began slowly making their way toward the altar, eyes weeping a blue mucus, corsages of dusty blue mountain flowers pinned to lapels and wrapped around wrists.

The Voodoo priest made a grand gesture with his arms as if inviting a swarm of locus to feast. Their expression blank, though deep in their eyes fear and pain could be seen beating against the invisible barrier that held their emotions in check. The sound their feet clapping in unison on the polished tile echoed from the rafters as they advanced. Robert stood in front of his bride, to protect her from their guests, but he was suddenly tossed aside by the slim beauty.

"Maria, no!" He called in protest, but she advanced on her attackers, striding forward with bold steps, before unveiling her face. As if on sight, all of the guests halted their progression, like an army of tinker toys coming to the end of their cranks.

"Go on!" The Voodoo priest called to his army of nanite controlled minions. "Slay the princess!" He urged on, becoming increasingly agitated. "Kill her!" His crushing look of disenchantment was like a conductor at the apex of his symphony only to find his orchestra missing pages of their sheet music to the climax. Shocked into disbelief he rushed forward, armed with his staff. "What is going on?" He called, aggressively taking hold a hold of her arm, spinning her to face him.

Stoic brown eyes of a stranger met the skull faced imposter; they weren't the blue eyes he had known for as long as he could remember. "You're not …" he stammered out in confusion.

"No I'm not …" She answered with a tilt of her head.

"You're a …"

"Yes, I'm a …"

CRACK

It was as if the painted voodoo priest's face bent around Cameron's fist. Spit and blood flew in the air as he stumbled up the stairs, crashing into the pulpit. Wood, hat, and cane skittered around the man as he looked up as the petite cyborg tossed away the bride's veil and took a step forward towards him.

"Maria … where's Maria?" His voice slurred painfully.

From the shadows John Connor appeared behind him. From inside the hand-me-down leather coat, he pulled his Colt, drawing its trigger with a deadly click. "Too bad for you that we got to her first … Without her, your drugs and pre-programmed nanites are meaningless." He answered coldly. From the other side, closing in on him, each step Cameron took cast a darker and bigger shadow over the painted mockery of religion and the splintered altar like the cold hand of a reaper summoned by his dark intentions.

"All those teeth and no toothbrush." She chimed in.

John scrunched his face, side eyeing his partner in confusion. She blinked, pausing a moment. "Is that not the right context?" She asked.

"Out of all the movie quotes in the all the world, you chose …"

The Priest reached into his coat while John and Cameron where distracted and flung a handful of raw blue powder in John's face. The younger man covered his eyes with his forearm, coughing bitterly. As Cameron marched forward, the skull faced man lifted his staff to the crowd behind her.

Just as the killer cyborg lifted her fist ready to end the threat, an Asian woman in a silver dress and diamond choker, and a dark skinned old man in a white on black tuxedo, jumped on Cameron's back. In heels and a tightly restrictive gown, the cyborg collapsed to the floor as other guests, began to pile on her. The priest only had a moment to enjoy his "ace in the hole", before John found his feet.

CRACK, CRACK, CRACK!

His vision obscured by the burning of the strong dose of powder, his aim swiped coat, trouser, and nicked the side of the priest's face. Red blood began to mingle with the white and black face paint. The target of his tampered marksmanship began to flee as John stumbled a step after him.

For a moment the young hero was conflicted about where he was needed, whether it was to pursue the man he came to stop, or help Cameron, that he always knew didn't really need his help. But it was only a millisecond reminder, and ultimately a fruitless question. His feet carried him to the unusual sight of the upper class in millions of dollars of the finest clothing in world, essentially piling on top of his cyborg lover like they were in the middle of a game of rugby.

He tried not to think about how weird this all looked and sounded in his head.

A young man in his teens had just pushed himself against gravity, going airborne when John caught him in mid-air and tossed him over the railing. John had only pulled one of the royal guards off the pile and slammed a fist into his jaw, when an old woman in violet blazer and matching hat, was sent high into the air landing in the pews, by a kick from a bare leg, clad in a broken high heel. Slowly, like a chick breaking out of an egg, Cameron began peeling off her attackers. People of every age were being thrown across the church like they were no lighter than stuffed animals or throw pillows.

The last of them John pulled off was the older man in the reverse colored tux, but as he turned him ready to put the guest down, John felt light headed and suddenly the man's eyes appeared like sliver slits of some demonic reptile. It gave John pause long enough to take a haymaker to the cheekbone. The force of the punch and the effects of the drug sent John reeling as the mind controlled man looked to press his attack. However, just as he lifted his fist, a slender hand caught it from behind and twisted it with a sickening crackle. Cameron bent the man's arm to a place no arm should be bent to. Spinning, she sent him airborne, where he crashed into a regrouping mass of attackers, leaving them in a pile on the tile.

Cameron was now barefoot. The skirt to the Princess's gown had been torn to the upper thighs. Cameron's curls had fallen out and she had three gashes on her cheek with a woman's electric purple press-on nail still embedded in her skin. Her appearance and the anger building in John's gut was only a reminder that this was all one big distraction, for the ringleader of this venture to escape.

"Can you hold them off?" John asked picking out the fake nail from his partner's face, throwing it away. Cameron didn't speak, she just nodded. "I'm going to go after that son of a bitch!" He growled, moving away, before Cameron took a hold of him.

"John, wait …"

"No, Cameron, there's no time." He protested.

"You can't go after him alone."

"Yet I am."

"It's not advisable."

John shared a hard look with her, his intentions and wild emotions coursing through him, feeding off his impossible anger and the building anxiety of the drugs in his systems. For that one moment in the eye of the storm before the fight recommenced he said all he needed to say.

"_I'm doing this." _

She gazed after her only purposes in existence as he sprinted behind the broken alter, through the priest's door. She blinked, the ghost of worry glistened underneath a wall of stoic deadpan.

Through the priest's private quarters, past the renovation and "work ahead" signs and through the old wood paneled hallway was a stone staircase that led to a narrow corridor below. The passage was long, dark, and colder as John traveled downward. Even wrapped in the Connor's old coat, the chill John felt in the air seemed almost more psychological, the physical. His weapon at the ready, the youth slowly descended into the catacombs where this all started. On the shadowy walls, he could make out the outline of old skulls integrated into the stone, almost fossilized.

"_John …" _

The echo of a familiar voice came almost like a horse whisper of a cold wind from the darkness below, a voice full of anger and longing for the name on her lips. The woman's voice urged him to find her, extending a haunted invitation to the subterranean abode of the dead. He paused only a moment to steady himself, to control the drugs in his system once again. This time it was different, it wasn't that he was in pain, but more light headed, overly aware, and anxious … an illusion of such awareness as to almost see things that weren't there. It was why he tried to ignore the sightless, pale eyes of the embedded skulls watching him as he passed.

"_Welcome, John Connor … your future awaits inspection." _

Their voices addressed him with cold courtesy, emotionless and dreary. Yet, he recognized all of them, even as they spoke as a collective. He never forgot a name, never forgot a face, Sarkissian, Todd, Janelle, Jordan … They all were there to greet him.

At the foot of the stairs was a great gate. The bars were heavy and crusted in a thick layer of rust that came from moisture and neglect. The gate was already partially open, a tell-tale sign that he was on the right track. Reaching the last step, he was cautious in his footsteps as he examined the gate and its hinges.

"_John" _

A slender hand reached from the shadows beyond the gate, and through the bars, touched his cheek. John snapped straight, coming eye to eye with frozen, blue, vengeful irises. Sarah Connor was deathly pale, her lips a shade of deep blue, the veins on her neck were the same frozen and emotionless color of ice water running through them. There was something ethereally beautiful, and yet heart stoppingly terrifying, about his mother. The sensation of her slender palm was so familiar and yet the cold and pure hatred in the touch made it feel like a perversion, a childhood home invaded by an imposter.

Flinching from the touch, John opened fire at the apparition of the only woman he had ever loved. She slunk back into the darkness as the flashes of gun fire rang loud and boisterous in the narrow corridor, passing through the bared gate only to hit nothing. Incensed by a childlike need to chase after her, John threw open the gate with a nail biting squeal of un-oiled hinges and rushed into the long dark.

He ran from the stone corridor of the old church straight into the narrow hallway of a decomposing luxury bullet train. He remembered it well: the mahogany paneled walls, the Persian carpets. The scent of expensive perfume mingled with the scent of just as pricey alcohol and Cuban's smoke. But this time it was different. The mahogany was frozen to almost stone, and, under foot, the ice-layered Persian carpeting crunched and crackled under his boot. Leaning against the walls were the frigid bodies of the passengers that didn't have a cyborg protector to save them- beautiful waitresses in their nylon bunny costumes and stockings, men in tuxedos and tails, security guards in their ski masks and fatigue pants, their submachine guns frozen to the palms. As John stalked past them, their eyes followed him, mouths frostbitten and purple, disfigured from the fall rendering them useless. But their wordless blame fell solely on the hero amongst them. The smell of the train whiffed of disturbed soil and old pine, branches and snow drenched needled leaves invaded through the brittle glass of the portholes. Returning to this place, walking down its halls of twisted metal and death caused a deep anguish in John's heart and throbbing pain in his frost bitten arm and fingers.

He didn't need the softly bitter voice of his mother to call for him to know where she dwelt in her shared frozen tomb. It was a short trip down the corridor that lived forever in his nightmares, to the control room. He recognized the cords hanging from the torn wall paneling where he had vainly tried to find a combination to free his mother and uncle. The exposed copper was covered in frost, brittle and erect in the biting air.

"_John …" _

He hung his head in defeat when he saw the once-bolted doors of the room he had tried so desperately to open in what seemed like another lifetime ago, hanging open with such disregard for his emotions seemingly mocking him,. He took a deep breath as he strode inside.

Sarah Connor was waiting for him, her back turned as her sorrowful frozen eyes looked out the window at the tundra of snow that half buried them.

"Mom …" He spoke to her.

"_You've returned … did you come for me?" _

John found it odd that when Sarah spoke he heard one thing, but a part of his brain told him that what she was saying was not what was actually being said to him. He had tried so hard to remember now why he was here, and what he was doing before he had chased his mother. But from the moment he saw her, all of her, so beautiful and horrible, he couldn't focus on anything else.

"No." he replied honestly.

"_Of course not."_ She cut him. _"I've never been that important to you."_ She turned to side eye him.

"That's not true," he protested. "I tried to save you." The hardened young man was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a wide eyed six year old.

"_You've tried … that was always what I told myself, when I wanted to make excuses for you."_ She snapped_. "He tried. As long as he tried. Maybe he'd get over the metal if only he tried!"_ She turned fully to face him.

John recoiled as if she had slapped him, "It's not like that." He argued fruitlessly.

"_Maybe if the metal was trapped in here, you would've TRIED HARDER!"_ She shouted. _"If she was on the edge of a building you would've TRIED HARDER!"_ She began advancing on him as he backed away. _"Maybe if she was your foster parents you would've TRIED HARDER!"_ He turned his head away from her as she pinned him to the wall, her cold fingers balling the supple leather of her old brown coat.

"_How many people have died because of your teeny bopper romance?"_ She asked viciously. _"Is that why you wanted me out of the way?!"_ She slammed him against the wall.

"No, I love you."

"_Just not enough? Do you know what I gave up for you? Do you know what I've done for you? AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY ME! Trapped forever in the frozen skeleton of a metal tomb so that you could play Romeo and Juliet with your sex doll! Is that how much you loved me?!"_ She slammed him against the wall over and over again.

Her hands were cold and painful around his neck as she throttled him. A part of him felt like cowering under the table like a kicked puppy as his only family, friend, and god screamed at him with such unadulterated hatred. This one person that John had built his life around, which he spent his life chasing the ghost of, the myth he tried to live up too, was now calling him a failure. But while the child inside of him want to cry, wanted beg her not to say these thing, to scream in tears for her to give him a second-chance, to make her understand how much he loved her … there was another part of him, a part that was filled with a boiling cauldron of resentful anger. It all came from the same part of him that never felt more complete when he was inside Cameron in their bedroom, and just looking into his eyes knowing that their connection in that moment was all she ever wanted. It was the same place where he collected and cherished her rare smiles since before he had even dared utter the word love in his mind. It was all a part of him that couldn't give those things up, and could never be ashamed of them.

He reared back and hit Sarah across the face. "Fuck you!" he roared, hitting her again, freeing him of her grip. He breathed hoarsely as he found his mother suddenly wobbling, whereas he always knew Sarah could take more punishment than anyone he had ever met.

"I spent my life chasing you!" he screamed at her. "I've been there for you when no one ever wanted to! I was the one who cleaned you when you got so drunk you pissed yourself. You think you were the only one who sacrificed things for us? Fuck You! The friends I never had, the places I could never go, the things that I never had! It was always you! I waited hand and foot on you! How dare you!"

Again and again John struck her till she hit the floor. Pinning her down, John couldn't stop himself. Over and over again he struck his mother, filled with a bitter resentment that seemed to flow out of him out of nowhere.

"I've killed for you. I've saved you! I fought men twice my size to protect your honor in shit holes you dragged me to. I should've been going to birthday parties, not beating people's faces for saying you gave free blowjobs!" He slammed her against the floor. The haunted ruins began to bleed away into the platform in the crossroads of the island catacombs. The clear wiring tracing the perimeter of the altar above was glowing the same swirling blue as the Voodoo Priest's staff

"I loved you! You were my life! I was supposed to die with you and Derek! I was supposed to go down with my family! But you made sure that didn't happen! So now Cameron is all I have left! Don't you dare take her from me!" he screamed viciously beating the now visible figure of the priest who looked to be in a hell of his own making, blood gushing from his nose and mouth, his eyes glazed over in concussion.

The change of face leashed eighteen years of dangerously pent up fury, causing him to halt his vicious mauling of who he thought was the embittered poltergeist of Sarah Connor. The skull faced killer who had set up this ambush looked barely alive. John suddenly felt shaky, and almost ashamed. He had never felt more hatred for someone he loved with every fiber of his being.

With a heavy sobering breath, he found his feet and took a hold of the skull-faced priest's staff. The drugs made his steps feel uneven as they all but burnt out of his system through his emotions. The Voodoo altar stood in the center of the room, like it had last time. But this time he wasn't fooled, this man was no man of religion. Taking the end of cane, he pushed the altar over where it landed with a mighty crack spilling the ritualistic items over the stone floor and into the water below. Underneath was a large generator machine, with clear wires connected to it. John's emerald eyes followed their blue light as they snaked up the walls and outlined the chapel above. John sneered, lifting the cane and began to pound away at the power source that controlled the nanites. Sparks flew, the orb shattered, and plastic bent till the moan of a powering down electrical device echoed through the cavern.

John made his way back to the beaten priest that blearily reached out to him in unintelligible protest of the young hero's actions. He remembered what it had been like to kill Sarkissian, to feel the bones in his neck snap. He remembered the almost satisfaction of his efforts, and the moment of contentment in knowing that his mother would never been endangered by this man's hands again, but then came the realization, the guilt, the nightmares. Since then John had killed men, mercenaries, hired killers … but it was when he was armed with a firearm and he never had time to think it through, it was killed or be killed, but now … now he had a chance to think this through.

Taking the broken staff in hand, John Connor made his choice in millisecond.

* * *

The sun had begun to peek out just over the endless blue of the ocean. The surface was like a river of watercolors decorating the sea in purple, orange, and red. The swirling cool breeze pushed the tropical smell through and between the buildings as a lone slender figure strode over the island's cobblestone streets.

Sarah Connor's army brown tank top hung down to the crotch of her jeans now worn by Cameron. Though fitting lengthwise, it was tight across her ample bosom, being that Cameron was endowed with an advantage in that region of her body that Sarah didn't have. She turned back to make sure no one was following her. Those in places of authority might have an issue with stuffing princesses in garbage piles after stripping them down to their bridal lingerie.

The cyborg was relieved to get the gown off. It wasn't that she didn't like dresses, but as a creature built for warfare and fighting, she tended to avoid clothing that restricted her more base instincts. Practicality was essential in her wardrobe, which is why it wasn't hard to understand why she decided to adopt all of Sarah's clothing.

When she turned the corner back toward the chapel, she found a large crowd of people watching as a handful of local law enforcement and United States Marines were swarming around the area, helping victims of the mountain flower and Cameron's own handy work, to medical stations and facilities. What had started as the wedding of the century-the last royal wedding of any consequence in the last thirty years-had now become an international incident of terrorism involving seven countries and ten international business conglomerates.

From within the crowd she desperately searched for any sign of John, who she hadn't seen since he left her to go after the man responsible for the chaos. But sweeping the victims and the crowd three times she and her sensors were at a loss for where John could be. Somewhere inside of her there was a feeling that should not be.

It was often the question that was spoken amongst scientists. What happens when a machine has no purpose any longer? What happens when a computer makes an error on the one task that it was seemingly built for? Does it shut down? Does it destroy itself trying to fix the error? There had never been a moment in which Cameron had ever given a thought for her safety, never a moment in which she comprehended the human sensation of fear. But till this day, there was always something inside of her that she had always known shouldn't exist when she was separated from John. It started in those first couple of months with a teenage John Connor. She remembered what that was like, to be programmed with his safety. It was like an impulse, as natural as a beating heart, to be with John. It was like a need, an unspoken part of her to always be by his side. After the explosion, in those first weeks without programming, she was unsure what her life was, what she was supposed to do now? Yet in those quiet reflections as the house slept, she thought of John and how much those feelings never changed. There was no programming anymore. There was no directive, only to kill. Yet, she thought of him. Thought of the boy who had taught her so much, who looked at her in a way that no one ever had in her entire existence … and it was as if she was still programmed. She tried to fight it, tried to change the impulse, but she couldn't.

It wasn't till that night, the night John kissed her, carried her to the bed and gently entered her. It was the look in his eyes of that moment. It was only then did she realize how much of that look that was only ever for her was exactly how that impulse inside her felt. It was the fitting together of cosmic puzzle pieces, or the right electrons finding their permanent charge. When their bodies came together, bringing on a new powerful physical sensation that she never thought existed, she knew her life was tied to his forever. After that night they were no longer two beings tiptoeing around feelings unquantifiable to explanation or reason, they were two bodies belonging to one soul, forever intertwined by the great sense of humor of destiny.

"Cameron …"

It was like the first breath of fresh air, and the gleam of sunlight coming out of a long dark cave. She turned her head at her name that was spoken in a reverence and voice that one would find in the quiet of a church. But even as soft and gentle, escaping the notice of all around her, Cameron could hear it, and was drawn to it. It was sound sensors and a sixth sense of knowing the closeness of one another that only came from an intense emotional connection.

In perfect view of the events, from a sloped hill on the other side of the cathedral, John sat on the shadowy stairs of a storefront business. He was slumped forward, his face covered in heavy stubble and eyes dark and brooding as a new moon. In his hand was a milk bottle of dark alcohol that he was swigging, behind him was the Voodoo priest's staff leaning against a wall in the stairway. The shimmering orb was cracked open in a shattered chunk.

Taking one last gulp of the spicy liquid he held it out to Cameron. The cyborg wasn't a drinker by any stretch of the imagination. She disliked the ingredients and what they did to people. But she took it anyway, like always, drinking to lower John's intake level. "Are you alright?" She asked emotionlessly, not betraying what the last hour had been like.

"I'm alright …" He growled hoarsely his voice betraying the complete opposite. She could hear the sound of injured vocal cords and see the red marks of hands around his neck. While Cameron took a hearty glug of the alcohol, John reached back and took a hold of the staff. She watched him handle the rod, his eyes moving over their trophy distractedly. Whatever had happened between John and their enemy, she knew that it made whatever haunted John much, much worse.

"Just before I was reengaged by the mind controlled guests, they snapped out of their stupor, but began to flee in droves, convinced they were being chased or attacked by a myriad of things, insects, angry parents … and a rather aggressive rabbit." She puzzled the last with a pause of innocent pondering.

John shook his head. "The flowers that went missing in the manifest that we found at the shop, were integrated by our skull face friend into the ceremony. He dusted the powder on peddles and gave them out to the guests." He showed her the staff. "In the catacombs he had a large power generator with the same tech that was in this. He outlined the ceiling with cables, which sent the wireless control to all of the nanites above. We almost had the son of bitch, but while we were licking our wounds, it looks like he reprogrammed the rod to be like a laser guider, he can redirect the target by a point." He tossed Cameron the staff. Exchanging items, John took a swig as the girl observed the prize of victory, confirming John's analysis with a scan. At the ends of the sharpened plastic, she saw blood stains that had begun to dry.

Her eyes were stoic when they returned to John. "Did you kill him?" Though her voice was even, there was a certain weight to her query that hung in the air.

"GET THEM OUT! GET THE OUT … CLOSE THE WOUND, THE SPIDERS ARE CRAWLING INSIDE OF IT! PLEASE!"

Cameron swung around to the opening of the cathedral. An armed squad of Marines was escorting a gurney where the thin skull faced priest thrashed about against restraints. A beard of blue powder was rubbed deep into his lower face. But amongst the most noticeable change to the man was the gruesomely disfiguring open gash on his painted cheek, which was bleeding profusely.

Turning back to John, Cameron said nothing. The youth took a hard bitter drink and wiped his leather sleeve over his mouth when he was done.

"So when he looks in the mirror he'll always remember …" His voice was filled with a growl of vengeful hatred as he sneered out the dark promise. He suddenly dipped his head with a painful wince. Cameron took an automatic step forward to help him. But as if someone had taunted him with deep hurtful words, John got to his feet and flung the bottle with a target in mind. "Like I do!" He yelled as the glass projectile shattered in an alley.

Cameron spun around to find who John was aiming for, but the alley was empty. She found John's gaze and trailed it again, but no one was there. Breaking contact with whomever it was he saw in the dark, John shook his head. Gently, Cameron reached out and touched his shoulder. He whirled and found her neutral eyes, for a moment it was as if John was sinking slowly into another world. But as dark eyes searched hers, it was like he was waking up from some horrible nightmare. His hand reached out and touched her cheek, his palm rubbing against the familiar flawless skin of the woman he loved.

He let out a sorrowful breath, hardened by an old pain. He ran his hand through her silky locks with a grounded familiarity. He slowly pulled her into a hard embrace, burying his face in her hair, as if she was a life preserver in a vast dangerous ocean that was around him. After a long moment, Cameron placed her forehead against John's. He kept his eyes closed, savoring their contact.

"Let's go home, John." She suggested.

He nodded, leaving an arm around her shoulder and leaning against her for support as they began to leave the scene as the tropical sunrise framed the two silhouettes in the chill of a new morning in paradise.

"Cam … what was the tagline in the commercial for this place?"

"Peace and relaxation is just one plane ride away."

"Do you remember the name of that lawyer on TV that we saw before that commercial?"

"Yes … why?"

"I'm suing for false advertisement."

**Epilogue Next!**


	5. Case Closed (Epilogue)

_5 months Later_

"_**I'm Alice Jackson and this is our continuing coverage of the recent shake up at the LAPD. For those of you who just joined us, Commissioner Loeb, Chief O'Hara, and Tactical Specialist Murdock are just three high profile names in a list of suspects of what some are calling one of the largest law enforcement cover-ups in United States history. For more we go to Alexandra Hawkins at Police Headquarters."**_

"_**Thank you, Alice … there are few that will forget the summer night in July twelve years ago, when incarcerated fugitive Sarah Jeanette Connor, newly escaped from Pescadero Asylum for the Criminally insane invaded the main offices of Cyberdyne Incorporated. The hour long siege resulted in thousands of dollars in damage and the injuring of over 30 police officers. For many years it was believed that the seemingly mad woman and partner, Son, John Connor blew themselves up in a botched bank robbery eight years ago. But just three months ago, Zeira Corp. CEO and Co-Founder Catherine Weaver unveiled her new AI platform, "John Henry" to champion the automated ideas of now slain City Manager Barbara Chamberlin. John Henry showed a wide range of skills, including how easy it was to break LAPD firewalls and accessing visual evidence. In the demonstration to top local and federal officials the AI uncovered video evidence that LAPD SWAT team members lead then by Captain Murdock fired on unarmed Miles Dyson, once considered the leading expert and most sought after mind in the Computer engineering field. Initially it was thought that Sarah Connor had taken Dyson hostage and executed him as reported in Specialist Murdock's report of the incident. Now new evidence recovered by "John Henry" as placed a spotlight on a covered up perpetrated by many top cops of the LAPD. The evidence not only show Connor's innocence, but that she and son John were nowhere to be found on the premises, during the siege. Though many former members of the SWAT team dispute the AI's evidence, Mayor Hamilton had this to say." **_

"_**I am appalled by this clear abuse of power and trust of the people of this great city by those sworn to protect us. Therefore I've invited and welcome the presence of the FBI and any other Federal branches at this time to conduct their investigation … and with the governor's approval, have hereby drop all charges posthumously Concerning Sarah and John Connor as well as Cameron Phillips. May their records be sponged clean as our guilt over these grievous mistakes." **_

"_**Not an hour after Mayor Hamilton had made the pardons official did John Connor and long-time girlfriend Cameron Phillips resurfaced from hiding. Though news agencies swarmed over the situation, they refused to speak to the media. It has been reported that both local and federal officials have agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of money in a settlement fourteen years in the making. From city hall, this is Alexandra Hawkins with …" **_

The top left screen on a stack of plasma screens encased in plexiglass shut off with a tap of a key on a master keyboard. There was a crushing silence that suddenly enveloped the dark setting of the underground bunker. A young man with a shadow of stubble and dark hair lounged in a large leather swivel chair. His emerald eyes seemed pensive, his elbow propped on the Command chair's armrest. His thumb was placed against his chin, forefinger curled under nose. The new top of the line equipment blinked, the screens filled with loading bars and system updates, downloading programs and uplinking to computer systems and archives that they probably shouldn't be linking up too, legally.

The computer station was suspended on a platform of metallic webbing. Its stairs, which lead to the ground floor made strange echoing noises when they were climbed. They were noises that couldn't interrupt John Connor's thread of thought that was far away.

"I've got the system going, but it'll take a couple of days to get everything online and running, Cam."

The slim dark eyed girl, with glossy locks of straight chocolate hair stopped at the platform. Her head tilted inquisitively at the turned away leather chair left behind by whatever branch of government that had built and abandoned the shelter.

"How did you know it was me?" She asked

John turned the chair around to face her, his face shadowed and colored oddly in the illumination of multicolored lights of the plasma screens, and information bands below. "I recognized the cadence of your footsteps … you're not as mysterious … as you seem." John Connor paused at the sight of a silver T-shirt she didn't leave him with. In big bold letters of navy blue it read "Sarah was right" he frowned in puzzlement. Golden flecked eyes gazed down at it.

"Oh, the members of the conspiracy website "The Carrie Porter Files" were holding a rally outside Pescadero, a young man who called himself "The Wizard of Ozbourne" gave it to me. Many of his friends such as "Yetikiller" and "Morded" as well as "Someofme" and "LeathalAI" who had a curious name for an anti-machine rally, all encouraged me to make a speech." She explained.

"So a group of conspiracy buffs, who won't give out their names, who are scared of killer machines controlled by the government … asked a machine to give a speech, at their rally."

"They were quite supportive of cyborg and human romance… they said that it will be the only logical choice in a post-apocalyptic world filled with machines, to breed with them to repopulate the earth. I believe the super intelligence of machines matched with Human ingenuity will somehow lead to exploring our galaxy."

John paused only to watch dumbfounded in the sincerity of which his lover spoke. "Again, you went to this rally, because?" He sounded wholly amused at her.

"These members of this conspiracy forum were the only people who believed in you and Sarah's innocence. They should be rewarded for their loyalty to your plight." There was something mildly chastising in her stoic tone.

John chuckled. "Yeah? Well, these are also the people that think that I'm behind the London riots, Mom was an assassin for the Masons, you're an Alien princess. But my favorite has to be that we have children that have traveled back in time to make sure that all the important events in history happened." He stared at her for the longest time.

After a beat a smile slowly formed on his lips, the spread into a grin. In response she returned with her trade mark toothy smile. Wordlessly he swiveled back to the computer and began tacking on the master keyboard. But when he wasn't looking the girl's smile faded as she reached down and touched her lower stomach a moment.

Conquering the indecision in what she wanted to tell him verses what she should at the moment, Cameron walked forward, watching as John powered down the non-essential systems. She studied him quietly. There was a tension in his shoulders and something worrisome in his eyes behind the mischievous lilt in his grin she had come to covet now that it slowly was returning again.

"What's bothering you?" She took her spot behind his right side.

He shook his head. "Nothing" he said distractedly. On one of the screens he had been staring at she saw the spectral analysis of the Nanites taken from the blood of the dead security guard on their adventure on the island.

"You're still trying to solve a case we solved months ago." It wasn't a statement.

John sighed. "It's …" He trailed off. "It fits too well, Angel." He leaned back to look at her. "I've done all sorts of research on Nanite tech and nothing even comes close to the stuff that our now dubbed psycho "The Midnight Father" had. There's more to it." His voice took a dark register as he slumped in his chair.

"You believe that someone gave this "Midnight Father", the technology he used?" She played along with his theory.

"It's a possibility …" he tapped a few keys and brought up the analysis to the larger main screen. "Monaco's expertise is in chemistry, not robotics or Cybernetics." He waxed broodingly on the small insect like piece of micro- machinery. "Maybe we got the front man and not the one we needed to on that shit hole." He said absently.

A slim hand gently laid itself on the young man's broadened shoulder. He returned to his love's eyes and saw her steady, unshakeable demeanor of unspoken consul in her emotionless gaze. It was a gaze that helped reflect a conscious side in him that shown a healthy light on his faults. It was a great irony in life that it was the touch and love of a machine that held in it the reminder of what it was to be human.

John snorted and sighed like a deflating balloon. "Questions for another day." he reached back and took her hand off his shoulder and kissed it. She didn't smile, and she didn't make a movement of denial at the action. Cameron treated the small affection as if it was as natural and normal as the wind in her glossy tresses or the falling of rain on her coat. Between them their love was as natural and powerful as the consistency of nature.

"Everyone is waiting outside." The cyborg reported. The older youth gave a small huff of annoyance against her captured hand. She helped him out of his seat. Their hands lingering in one another as they descended the staircase of the computer station platform.

All around them was a dimly lit mixture of a granite floor, and four walls of thick concrete, protecting a large subterranean fallout bunker long abandoned, maybe even forgotten when John and Cameron bought the land over it with the settlement fortune paid to them by the government. It had been Cameron that not only chose the land, but decided to restore it into their own private bunker. Though through Cameron seemingly extreme familiarity of where everything was and should go, John began to wonder if they were creating a paradox out of this place.

Toward the end of the far wall was a guard rail of rusted iron, beyond it was a clean reservoir, flowing in through steel bars, just under the thick soundproofed wall. At The center of the bunker were two circles of marble, the largest encircling the smallest. There were four smaller circles that surround them in four points as if to make a cross. It seemed to John that this fallout shelter was seemingly built over the preexisting polished granite and marble.

Cameron had asked about the Master's Wheel, to which John explained the concept of the circle contracting toward your goal as your skill expanded. His beloved cyborg companion claimed that she had seen that movie, to which he explained that it was a thing long before the movie about masked swordsman. He also explained that he had been taught by the same symbol when he was young by Sarah.

They navigated through crates of unopened computer and forensic equipment given to them by their benefactor and stamped with the Zeira Corp. logo. John was uneasy about the partnership they had entered into with its CEO and pet AI, despite Cameron's reassurances of it.

"_You're not convinced, John?" _

"_I'm not sure what to think … I don't trust her …it." _

"_It's understandable, but in the future, you pursued this alliance." _

"_Yeah … and she said no." _

"_Times are different, something has changed." _

"_Is it me …?"_

"_You?" _

"_Am I different to her, to you, than the John you knew, future me?" _

"_No … not different."_

"_Really …"_

"_Yes, the difference isn't you, the difference is me. I understand now what I didn't when I knew future you, I've changed, because I understand." _

"_Understand me?"_

"_Yes … and because I understand you, I better understand myself." _

"_You understand love …" _

"_No, but I understand that when I'm with you … it exists inside me." _

"_Yeah, I love you too." _

They made their way to the right wall which had a staircase made from granite that led to a tall and wide arched entrance. It was flanked on each side by large empty bookcases. Together they walked up the smooth staircase and exited the bunker.

The archway led to a transitional lobby between the bunker and the main exit. The room was filled with a hue of blue light and a forest of glass display cases like a cross between an exhibit at a metropolitan museum and a sports franchise trophy room. There were tubes evenly spaced against the wall, to rows of weapon lockers filled with the Connor family armory. Every bluish light in the room was on the floor and positioned under the glass cases.

The first case was front and center, a constant reminder of a mission statement close to John's heart. Inside the display case was an assortment of clothing that had sat in an LAPD evidence locker for many years before being surrendered to John per-request along with the settlement money. The complement was a torn navy blue detective's overcoat, a blood stained grey t-shirt, and grey slacks with white paint stains. At the feet was a pair of black and white scorched Nike sneakers. A plaque was welded at the bottom, reading "You're stronger than you ever thought possible … the future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves." John paused a moment to stare at all that remained of his father Kyle Reese, before he moved one. But as he passed, he touched the glass longingly.

Between the weapons lockers was a square case that one might find in a museum exhibit. On display was a sleek, but very bulky and large gun. The first plasma rifle shared the case with a frost damaged blue fedora, with a nine millimeter round through the top at the stock and on the other end a pair of satin bunny ears belonging to a sexy waitress uniform. John paused a moment with a grim smirk as he stopped to open the case. Cameron tilted her head as she watched John removed the fedora, but rather than explain himself he motioned her to move on.

At the Corner of his eye he saw against the eastern wall the newest addition the trophy room. In a glass tube was a Latin priest's coat, slacks, and wide brim hat was on display. It was all tied together with a high voodoo shaman's mask where the head would be. Ahead in the break of weapons lockers was The Midnight Father's orbed staff encased in glass. The golden staff was still broken, guts of circuitry hanging out of the shattered orb like unattended dreadlocks. Even all the months later, it still haunted his dreams when he slept. The mountain flower derivative had long since burned out of his system, but he could still feel the psychological scars.

He knew they were there, even when Cameron couldn't understand them. He knew because when he turned to the west wall he could see a cold corpse of ethereal and horrible beauty and the frozen eyes of the only man in his life he could consider his father figure. They stood in glass cases like dead pharaohs in their tombs. Their angry stares filled with hatred for the love he now held in his heart where there should be vengeance. But when he blinked hard after no longer being able to stand under their dark gaze, they were gone, but only for what they left behind. The two cases stood alone in the dead center of the wall, showcased so that it could be seen anywhere in the room. The oldest and most prized case held a thin black tank top and British kaki cargo pants. Black leather shoulder holsters were over the tank top straps, wrapped around the cargo pants a black belt with two magazine pouches in the back. Forever beside her as in death was the second case filled with a hauntingly familiar green army field jacket, the long sleeve gray t-shirt with the stylishly tattered collar, and jeans.

"John?"

He blinked and nodded at Cameron who was waiting at the exit for him. He followed her lead, right into the entrance lobby of their property. Their building was three levels, but two stories. The bunker was a basement level, But on the ground floor where they stood it was made up of a polished tile floor of Spanish influence. A receptionist's desk of oak that sat unoccupied with a rusted type writer and an old lamp that looked as if it hadn't been used in close to fifty five years. Across the desk was a large tile staircase the led up to the upper floor which was a large loft that could be turned into a one room living space. On the southern wall of the ground floor was a ashy door newly touched up with polish, a frosted window was framed on it.

A young Asian woman with an orange mohawk was squatted down with an artist's paint set and was outlining the names Connor and Baum over their new occupation on the glass. She turned around at the sound a door opening and gave John and Cameron a very puzzled look. The door that they had exited from had a maintenance sign over it. John had to admit that it probably would look weird to see two people exit out what was probably from the outside looked like a handy man's closet. John just gave a nod of greeting, while his companion tilted her head in anticipation. But after an awkward beat, the artist shrugged and went back to what she was doing.

The building was located in the heart of the old city, near an abandoned trolley station, on the edge of the old industrial district. The buildings on the street had a deco style of architecture of the 1940's. A litter of old palm trees grew out of the old chalk white sidewalks.

A small throng of people were waiting outside the building. Most were shop owners and patrons of the smaller shops on the fringes of the old districts that came to see what was going on. In the crowd there were a few people from the media, mostly if not all photographers. Amongst the people waiting closest to the door was a man in a kaki trench coat, he was dark skinned and bald, with a well-trimmed goat tee. The woman he was trying to keep his distance from was short with pale, flawless skin. Her matching milk white overcoat gave her a sleek sterile appearance that was offset by her unnatural hair colored a bright red. Her cold shark like look fell on the man to which her lip quirked in amusement.

When John and Cameron came out, they were both slipping on their coats. John as always wearing Sarah's old button down made of supple brown leather and Cameron in her coveted purple motorcycle jacket. When they appeared, the bald headed man approached them with a friendly smile.

"John …" He held his hand out to the now taller young man.

"Jim … or do I call you Commissioner now." John clasped James Ellison's hand with an iron grip that surprised the former.

The shorter man had mirth in his somewhat nervous chuckle. "I actually prefer James … but I'll make an exception." He let go of the young man's hand.

John quirked an eyebrow. "I'm not sure what I'm more puzzled over. You being here or how you got your job." He gave the man a somewhat telling look that signaled that he may have an idea.

"Hamilton wanted good press for the new department, so he sent me down here for a photo for the couple of the hour and as for how I got the job …" he trailed off looking back to the sleek woman with flaming hair. "How do you think?" He moved on, leaving John to trail his eyes to the red head who stood in her place like a statue, cold interested eyes observed the trio.

Ellison offered his hand to Cameron, who stared at it blankly, before turning deadly stoic eyes toward the man. He cleared his throat under her intense death stare and only when she finally stalked away did he breathed easier. The dark skinned man turned to John who gave a smirk of dark humor.

"If you're expecting anything, Jim …" He clapped the Police Commissioners shoulder. "You'd better have packed a lunch." He followed his companion to the doorway of the building were several photographers were gathering. But when Ellison turned back to find his former employer, she was no longer anywhere to be seen.

Outside the doorway of the two story building was a newly minted golden plaque. In bright gilded lettering it announced the purpose of the new institution.

**Connor & Baum Consulting Detectives **

John and Cameron stood opposite sides, their feet placed forward on a step. Their bodies leaned against the wall, the plaque between them. John placed the fedora on Cameron's head, while he dug out a Holmesian tobacco pipe and placed it in his mouth jokingly.

And with a click of the camera a new future had begun.

* * *

Trees rustled and creaked like old bones in an aging man, the coming storm called like the wrath of a jealous lover coming to settle a score with him. On top of the hill was old man forest's wife, an aged beauty, in the form of an expansive manor sitting sentry on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Built of chalk white stone and French columns the home looked more like an aged castle, forgotten to time, the palace of a Hollywood Royal Family many years ago. Guarded by a gate of rusted bars, flanked by gargoyles, repulsive and grotesque were the fanged beasts. In the flashes of lightening they looked twisted and evil.

Yet inside it was as quiet as what the manor's outer appearance has suggested … a tomb. At night when the full moon was brightest the murky water reflected a shimmer that gleamed through the haunted homes large dusty windows and decorated the walls.

Unlike most old homes that were left to time and the elements were there was at least a creek or shutter. In the expansive castle, not a sound remained. Still and motionless were the shadows that haunted the halls of an opulent home. A home that was once privy to the mysterious and blasphemous actions of those who once ruled the streets of a city. Their masks of glit and glamour for the flash bulbs of entertainment did well to hide the blood that filled the gutters, sewers, back alleys … and ruined streets of a nightmarish future.

Built in the late 1800's the large common room was the host then too, authors, politicians, old world thinkers, movie stars and artists. It had been a safe place to discuss and debate the decay of civilization, the apathy of humanity. They build the ship of a dream for a better society that they captained in their works and arts. Inside the small parlor rooms they whispered to each other their impossible goals, to start over, not for themselves alone, but for all humanity. To redeem human sins by punishing the defilers of Eden … to cut away the apathetic like a trapped limb so that they could be free. So they could begin again, so they may have their heaven on earth. Their whispers as the decades melted one into another became schemes, schemes became religion, religion became fervor, and fervor led to the vile things that became their downfall.

Yet, standing in that long forgotten kingdom, a prophet could see it all as it was yesterday. Sharp blue eyes flicked back as if he could still see excited faces, a near century of planning coming to fruition. They all came then. The architects of humanities downfall and resurrection, they all came to see the conception of their savior, their messiah that would save humanity. He who would lead it from the fires of their self-made destruction into the utopia of a better union. The prophet could still see his angelic saint cloaked in satin, lain in front of them upon a bed of silk. Her raven curls splayed on pillows, a chrome mask covered her face. He remembered opening her robe for all of them to bask in her naked beauty …

Yet for all the dust and years of neglect, in the corner room the soft flickering glow of a fireplace illuminated the blue hue of the stormy night that thundered overhead. The prophet tilted his head and followed the light, ignoring the dust shaking free from the white sheets covering the furnishings he could still name from where they were sitting in the expansive lounge. The rumble of thunder seemed to almost bring the home alive. Like somewhere deep in the bowels of the dark unoccupied castle a dragon slept.

He slipped through the double doors and was suddenly surrounded all around him by tall shelves of books in the oval shaped room. The shelves molded to the walls in a crescent shape, three rows tall. To the left sat a staircase the led to a landing rising above the ground level staircase where even taller shelves filled with volumes of books, that hadn't been cracked open in over a century. Between the six rowed shelves on the landing stood stain glass windows, casting odd shapes in the new fire light of a fireplace unlit in almost thirty years.

In the fire light the prophet was a handsome older man, with sharp features and even sharper blue eyes. In those pupils was found the point of a blade that exuded the strength of a man's will and convictions. Covered in overcoat and leaning on an ornate cane decorated with a golden pummel of a two headed eagle. In the shadow of the flames the age lines had become more pronounced around the corners of his mouth and eyes. The salt and pepper goat-tee and dark hair gave him a distinguished appearance.

"A man who's just gotten married shouldn't be so uptight, Mr. Goodwin."

The voice cut through all the little sounds and distractions in the room. It was a powerful voice, deep, refined, and educated with a hint of German in it. When he spoke everything in the room went graveyard silent. The overcoat swirled as the prophet spun toward the stain glass window. A man stood in the shadows facing the pane. He was tall and stalwart, hands placed behind his back. There was an appearance of dignity and command in his posture.

"Doctor …" the older man sighed in relief leaning on his cane, slim fingers clutching the material of his coat where his heart was.

In the reflection of the glass, the old doctor's spectacles glinted in the flash of lighting. He tilted his head at the Prophet's action. "You're quite jumpy for a man who is in a place he once considered home away from home." He said with a hint of amusement, polished over with an air of disinterest.

Sharp blues glared bitterly. "What made this place home, is not here any longer." He replied defensively at the tone the old man used with him.

"A situation in which you've exasperated further." The shadowy man chastised. The strength of the voice, coupled with the posture was like a wrecking ball that crushed any sort of outer defense that the prophet had. In its ruins he felt the swell of emotional fatherly issues rise above his control, exasperating his feelings of inadequacy that few knew about.

The inner pain turned to cold anger. "I married the Princess, got her to sign it all to me in our prenuptial. Wasn't that enough?" He asked resentfully.

"The princess?" The doctor's voice was like a snap of a whip. His tone was graceful and cathartic in the air, but painful when cracked against its target. "She was to be eliminated, for our plans to go further." He turned his head to the side, just a glimpse of blue eyes, made of steel made the former British officer wince in childlike fear of reproach.

He shifted uncomfortably. "There were complications, involving my assassin." He sighed tiredly.

The Doctor returned to the pain. "I warned you about using Hector Monaco …" He was cold.

The older man to his cane in hand, turning on the doctor. "Monaco was the perfect choice, he was smart, he had vision, and he knew the island better than anyone. When I found him in New Orleans his serums and powders were perfect and untraceable to the z level investigators there." He argued his methods.

"Yes and he was defeated by a couple of cheap, armature detectives, making our plans much harder. But more to the point the reason Hector Monaco was defeated was because he was personally involved in the matter at hand. You asked a man to murder his sister, and whether he hated her or loved her. He would've been too close. His plans too grand, too involved. He was prone to make a mistake, a mistake that cost us a clean undetectable foundation for the future, The nanites I gave you, and the lovers on an Adventure cruise their money's worth." He lectured the younger as if explaining to a small child his faults. "Tell me, Robert … how long before your "Subjects" start to question our presence and the lack thereof of their rightful regent?" He asked.

"Maria is heavily medicated and attending the best _rehab_ money can buy, for the sake of _our child_ inside her, after suffering from a … _"Breakdown"_ after the stressful week of our wedding." He reassured the doctor.

"I'll insist that she comes to Pescadero … she and her brother will have the finest care available" His voice was smooth and dark, his amused frown contorting his face demonically in the red reflection of the stain glass.

There was a loud clap and the sound of rollers grinding with loud squeaks. It was the first signs of life in the old manor in almost twenty-six years.

"Hello, anyone alive in this foocking place?" A voice echoed through the halls. It was rough and vulgar, dipped with a hard cockney accent.

Robert Goodwin turned with a glare tailor made for the doctor that fit his outrage. There was an old fervor in his anger, a blasphemy for someone to enter this home uninvited, a non-believer of all. But the old man seemed to be unaffected by his pupil's disgust.

"In here Mr. Smyth." He called, his voice echoing through the library.

"Yeah, cause that's bloody helpful."

"In the library, Mr. Smyth."

"Wha?"

"Just follow my voice." The Doctor spoke with an inflection of someone guiding a small child.

The doors to the room swung open and a short man with a round build and healthy gut waddled inside. He wore a fur coat and walked with a cane with a ruby showcased on the pommel. He had thick, coarse brown hair in wiry curls. His face was gruesomely gnarled by three deep horizontal cuts. One of such claimed a piece of his beak like bird shaped nose, making him almost grotesque to look upon, for those who were not warned first. In his mouth a cigar burned to ash as he chewed the end.

"Don't be taking that tone with me, Burkoff. I'm doin you a favor here." The short man who spent much money on making himself look refined, showed very little in his manner. Atherton Smyth gave a quick look about the place and blew out a cloud of smoke. "Fancy place you got here, Goodwin … I'd fire the maid though." His laugh was an unpleasant squawk, followed by a coughing fit.

Robert Goodwin glared, his eyes reflected in the strike of lighting that illuminated the room. "You're a funny man, I'm sure they could book you in the Apollo." The stiff English accent echoed intimidatingly through the library.

Smyth snickered under his breath. "Oi, I'd watch myself, rich boy … you might actually end up in a real fight, talking like that." He pointed his cane at the taller man.

"Gentlemen …" The doctor called over the bickering that had the intentions of escalating. "We're not here to measure the size of members, or to be regaled of your distain of old money, Mr. Smyth." He cut sternly through both men. "This is a business call, is it not?" He asked. The long overcoat snapped with a swirl as Robert Goodwin paced away gracefully his cane tapping against the polished floor.

"Right, right." The small man nodded, a puff of smoke exited from his nostrils as the red glow of embers illuminated dark eyes. "olright, boys … wheel her in!" he called behind him.

The boisterous sound of something heavy thundered through the doors. It was pushed by four men in fur line collared leather bomber jackets. The mercenaries wore camouflage pants and jack boots, all their faces were covered in ski-masks. With labored grunts they pushed in a large rectangular cube. It was facing right side up and had a metal covering.

Goodwin rested his weight on his cane and stared at the monstrosity. "What's this rubbish." He asked aloud, taking exception to even more unworthy non-believers entering his own person holy ground.

"Rubish?" Smyth sounded sourly offended at the accusation. "This Rubbish is what pops here had me busting me balls for. Do you realize how many palms had to be greased and throats had to be slit to make good on me bloody word?" he asked angrily.

The Doctor for the first time moved from his spot at the window. His exterior was covered with darkness, but the glint of his glasses could not be mistaken. In the shadows the face of a grandfatherly man with a jaw covered with white fluff of a beard that could just be made out. He looked like a wise old owl, or maybe the kindly neighbor that you took your advice from.

"Yes, Mr. Smyth, you should be commended on your criminality and resourcefulness in the art of intimidation_, now get on with it._" There was anticipation in his voice that couldn't be masked. Goodwin turned in muted surprise at his old mentor, before catching the reveal.

One of the ski-mask mercenaries took ahold of the handle to the metal cover and yanked on it. There was a cold sterile hiss that incited a rush of frozen hair that spread throughout the room. Inside the metal shell was a glass case filled with a bubbling liquid that slushed like ice. Inside was a naked woman.

"My god."

"Nah, I prefer … the holy freakin fatha."

The enchantingly beautiful woman incased in the preservative was deathly pale, with cold blue lips. Her lose raven curls floated in the cold liquid, her eyes were closed. She had several visible scars on her slim, muscular thighs, and a stab wound on her shoulder. Goodwin dropped his cane on the floor with a clack and stepped forward in amazement.

"It's …" he shook his head.

"It's our new weapon." The Doctor finished for him.

Smyth, taped the glass with his cane and paced around the tube. "Yeah, dug this one out of the ice after an unfortunate run in with a couple of love sick teenagers bent on stealing what was mine." He sneered unsavorily at the thought of the night. He chomped on the cigar and continued. "Was gonna take some liberties with this little ice angle before feeding her to a couple of my friends down at the Aquarium, but that was till I found out who she was." He chuckled at the dark look Goodwin gave. "It's not every day you find someone like _her_ frozen to a bloody popsicle in your own train … I figured this one would pay out like a slot machine with the right buyer." He nodded to the Doctor.

"Did you do as we discussed?"

"Yeah, yeah …" The portly man grunted annoyed at the doctor's pestering. "Ran the CAT and CV scans and all that shit on her." He scoffed. "Stuffed her in whatever this Seven Up goop is." He blew smoke in the woman's face behind the glass.

"And?" Goodwin paced toward the unanimated corpse, floating in the slushy mixture.

Chubby hands placed the nub back between crooked tobacco stained teeth. "Her? This one wouldn't know her own bleedin name, unless you told it to her, and even then she might not believe you." He patted the glass as if it was the rear of the prize breeding steer in the stockyard show, and he was the rancher.

"Very good." The Doctor sounded pleased.

Goodwin turned back. "Head Trauma?" there was concern in his voice, as well as accusation. "How extensive?" he glared like a worried husband.

"Fook if I know." The short racketeer blew cigar smoke at the damper Englishmen. "I ain't being paid to give a shit. I told you what the docs said from the scans. Even if she's gone full retard, I expect to be paid what we agreed on, Burkoff!" Smyth pulled out his cigar. He held it between two fingers, pointing it threateningly at the old man.

"You will receive all you've asked for Mr. Smyth, I assure you." Doctor Burkoff placed his arms behind his back.

"Good …" The man jerked his head toward the exit. His men took the hint, moving out of the room orderly. "Almost poetic if you ask me. The Kid and his doe eyed cheerleader mark up my face and steal my prized possession. But looks like I'got his and now I'm gonna get richer off her!" He squawked. "And they say there ain't no freakin Justice in the world!" His vengeful laugh was as grotesque and unpleasant as himself as it faded away in his departure, though the stench of old Cuban remained.

The old man walked down the dais toward the middle of the room, where Robert Goodwin stood in front of the woman encased in ice. He touched the glass gently. His sharp blue eyes glossed over as he observed her quietly.

"What is this?" He asked of the green liquid. His stoic voice masked by emotion.

"It's a cryogenic mixture that heals and rejuvenates. It was used for healing flesh of machines in Bioregeration chamber. When applied to humans it freezes the subject in time … even giving a few years back." He spoke with an educated confidence.

"You would use the creations of our enemy."

"Of course I would … such as the nanites you lost, it all is to be used for the greater good. Luckily I still remember the formula." He chastised. "Once she's been conditioned, she'll be returned to her tank till we are in need of her." Burkoff replied coldly.

Goodwin looked as if he had been stricken in the face. "I had hoped …" He started sorrowfully.

"Yes …" The doctor drew it out like poison. "I'm aware of what you thought. But she is our greatest weapon in our arsenal and I will not have her scratched or harmed." His voice brought down any sort of shred of dignity his pupil had. "I will not unnecessarily age our prized asset for your boyish romantic and sexual whims, especially a man who has an already pregnant wife that indulged his needs. We must keep our prize in her prime for as many decades as possible." He left no room for debate.

Seeing the ache in Goodwin's eyes the doctor sighed in agitation. "For our plans to be fully realized, we must employ all advantages we can find, in order to fulfill the destiny of all those who pursued it in this house so many years ago." He placed a cold hand on the prophet's shoulder before Doctor Burkoff began to walk away. "You know like I do … she is the world's deadliest killer, Robert … she always has been. Now she'll kill for us, _like she used too_. She'll do it in memory of those who are gone now. She'll do it for those who took her in, those who gave her a purpose." His voice faded away as he left Goodwin alone in the room.

"And those who loved her." Goodwin whispered touching the face of his saintly angel from long ago through the frosted glass.


End file.
